High-Level Project Summary
Manual Override is a resource management text adventure game that takes place on a ship in the not so distant future destined for Saturn's moon Titan. However, when a critical system failure occurs in the main computer, the player must manually take over and manage the closed system of the ship to stay alive and on course.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
You are the first human sent out on a manned mission to Saturn’s enigmatic moon Titan. The automatic system has failed, and it’s up to you to keep the ship on course, manage resources, and complete the mission, alone. Can you survive the seven-year journey? Explore the trials and tribulations of a long-haul human spaceflight in the scientific text-based adventure: MANUAL OVERRIDE
This project is meant to explore the complexities of running the closed system of a space station. There are many aspects of a mission to take into considerations. This includes managing mission critical information like taking data or scans at precise times of day or locations as well as managing the health and safety of the human passengers. Resource management games are a popular form of video games and seemed particularly promising to act out the realistic challenges associated with space exploration. Since the player is directly responsible for all aspects of running the ship, we hope it will show the day to day complexities and large amounts of things this kind of exploration would require.
This project was built in Unity and C#. Visuals were made in Photoshop.
Space Agency Data
This project was inspired by the NASA Clean Air Study. The study was designed to research methods to clean the air in space stations like the ISS. As a result, this lead to the idea of a game where you managing the closed system of a space station or space ship. We also used a number of real NASA images to display in the game after a successful "scan" as a type of reward. These images were translated into ASCII art to keep in theme with the game as well as show how raw images would still need additional processing before being used.
This data was used in combination with data about the ISS to develop an understanding of the kind of resource management that would be required to keep the air composition of the ship in a healthy working order.
Hackathon Journey
The Space App experience was largely positive. It was a good challenge to develop something from scratch with a team. We chose this particular challenge since it seemed like the most open to a creative interpretation. We were inspired to choose this challenge because of our interest in geochemistry and Titan. It was a fun opportunity to build a project around a topic we both found so inspiring and that will only becoming more interesting as time goes on and new information comes out. It was especially fun during the few hours of development when we had the opportunity to brainstorm about visuals and features that we thought would be most engaging but would also give us an opportunity to highlight space topics we both find particularly interesting in geophysics, geochemistry, and space physics.
The biggest setback of the project was uploading the final alpha of the game to a place to be viewed by others. The entire original method of displaying information and controlling the data was developed to work with JSON, but the web application that shows the game does not read JSON files so we had to rewrite the entire backend of the project halfway through. It was very difficult to get the game to a place to be seen as a demo.
References
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930073077
https://www.nasa.gov/content/growing-plants-in-space
https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earths-moon
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/mars-2003
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/asteroid-psyche-illustration
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/asteroid-psyche-illustration-2
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/asteroid-ida-and-its-moon
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/jupiter
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/splendid-saturn
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/titan
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/method-of-making-oxygen-from-water-in-zero-gravity-raises-hope-for-long-distance-space-travel/
https://play.unity.com/
Stern, S. Alan; Levison, Harold F. (2002). "Regarding the criteria for planethood and proposed planetary classification schemes" (PDF). Highlights of Astronomy. 12: 205–213, as presented at the XXIVth General Assembly of the IAU–2000 [Manchester, UK, August 7–18, 2000].
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123859389000444#:~:text=Cryovolcanism%20is%20defined%20as%20the,of%20the%20outer%20solar%20system
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/primer/
Lewis, John S. (1997). Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets. Perseus. ISBN 978-0-201-32819-6.
Tags
#game #titan #geochemistry #geophysics #cleanair #water #asteroidmining #aircomposition
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.