Mockup game My Driving Academy Created by the Sinpsher ITS Team

ITS Campus, ITS News – There is concern about the number of people aged 5-29 years who are vulnerable to accidents, underpinning three students of the Informatics Department Institute Technology Sepuluh Nopember (ITS), to initiate innovations in the form of puzzle card games themed on traffic education. The game called My Driving Academy was designed by B.tari Aliya Tsabitah, Erlinda Argyanti Nugraha, and Anggun Wahyuni joined the Sinpsher Team.

This team got the idea to make an interesting traffic education game, hoping that children who play this game will be more aware of the importance of traffic ethics. “We also want to get used to a sense of thinking before acting on our games, it can be seen from the mechanics,” said Btari Aliya Tsabitah or who is familiarly called Tari.

As the Sinpsher team leader, Tari revealed that in My Driving Academy, the player would act as drivers. Later, players will have to complete the existing levels by reaching destination points symbolized by red pinpoints. To move the player must use a movement card located in the bottom centre of the screen. “And the cards must arrange in a card container on it to determine the direction of movement,” she explained.

Tari said this game is also equipped with a GO button located on the container’s right side for players to start driving. So the process of composing cards and pressing the GO button, the player’s car will move according to the cards that have to arrange. “The applied drag-n-drop card mechanics created to not only teach about traffic ethics education but also teach how to devise the most effective strategies and routes to get to the destination,” she said.

This student from Malang also explained that My Driving Academy made by her team has several obstacles that are often encountered on the streets and the real world. There is roadwork, other vehicles, as well as traffic lights and people crossing.

(from left to right) Btari Aliya Tsabitah, Erlinda Argyanti Nugraha, and Anggun Wahyuni ​​showing mockups of their My Driving Academy game

“We created this obstacle to be able to learn about the ethics of patience and orderly traffic in driving, as well as reminding that the road is also used by other vehicles so that it requires players to be careful in driving so that there is no collision,” she said.

More about My Driving Academy, this game also comes with several features. Among other health features that show how long players can play this game, gasoline features that limit players’ movement, and there is also a seat belt feature in the form of toggles whose function is to increase the player’s awareness of the importance of wearing seat belts.

My Driving Academy also has a scoring system, where there are three stars that players can get. Each has an indicator, namely the first star is obtained if the player complies with traffic regulations. The second star for players who drives safely. The third star for players who save gasoline

For the division of work, The Sinpsher Team divides according to their respective skills. Tari served as an artist, creating assets in the game and several visual displays of a system design (UI). Erlinda and Anggun served as programmers. More precisely, Erlinda made her mechanic card and tutorials, while Anggun created a program of car movements and obstacles. “We did this work from August to September, and there were additions last October,” he explained.

Asked about the obstacles, Tari revealed that the time of work is the biggest obstacle. Because Sinpsher Team is working on this part of the My Driving Academy game in their homes, it is integrated through GitHub (a shared web host service for software development projects that uses git version control systems and internet hosting services).

The Sinpsher team consisting of three ITS Informatics Engineering students won gold at Gemastik XIII

“Sometimes there are problems in combining our work until we create a new repository because there is a problem, even though it is already running 40 per cent in the old repository,” she explained.

However, according to Tari, these obstacles can be overcome well with the help of the supervisory lecturer, Hadziq Fabroyir SKom PhD. Besides, the 2018 class of students also mentioned that there is also help and support from lecturers of Graphics, Interaction, and Game Lab (Giga) of the Department of Informatics Engineering, Imam Kuswardayan SKom MT and Siska Arifiani SKom M.Kom.

With complete assistance, Team Sinpsher finally managed to record achievements in the grand competition in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), namely in the National Student Performance in ICT (Gemastik) XIII 2020 held at Telkom University, some time ago. The team won gold in the Game Application Development competition category.

In the end, Tari hopes that the results obtained by Team Sinpsher can inspire other female friends so that they do not think the game application development competition category contains only men. Tari also hopes that My Driving Academy can be a learning facility for children from an early age about traffic ethics.

“We hope that Team Sinpsher can continue developing other games and compete again in Gemastik next year,” concluded the student who joined the Giga Lab admin. (bob/pan/ITS Public Relations)