College - Author 1
College of Engineering
Department - Author 1
Computer Science Department
Degree Name - Author 1
BS in Computer Science
Date
6-2023
Primary Advisor
April Grow, College of Engineering, Computer Science and Software Engineering Department
Abstract/Summary
This project is about an ecosystem simulator game that allows players to manipulate the population size of the selected species and observe these species interact with each other. It focuses on reflecting the consequences of human intervention in the ecosystem and the difficulty of maintaining a balanced ecosystem. I’ve been astonished by how human intervention could easily crash the ecosystem and how difficult it could be to make up for our faults. And many people still hold the thought that we control the world and could determine the death or live of all other creatures as we like. However, the balance of the ecosystem is not something that should be played around with. Even to this day, scientists could not precisely predict the impact of species loss. Humans do not possess sufficient power to reverse the crash of the ecosystem and yet the consequences are not easy to bear. Therefore, It’s critical to raise people’s awareness. And I wish this game could draw people’s attention and hopefully help them become more prudent when it comes to making such decisions. Many current ecosystem-related games I’ve seen do not focus on this issue. They provide either limited realism or limited species and player interactions. To achieve the goal of this project, the reflection of users’ operation should be considered and be as realistic as possible. This is what the game aims to improve by allowing users to observe species interactions and change their population sizes to see how their actions impact the ecosystem.
URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cscsp/169