High-Level Project Summary
Mission Sigma is a game that allows kids and teens to get an introduction to space exploration. The game not only presents the area in a simplified and fun way, inspiring the new generation, but also serves to introduce important concepts and tasks, with data taken directly from NASA regarding astronaut functions, ship controls, missions on planets and satellites.Space exploration is important because it enables the discovery of resources that would be useful to humanity, scientific discoveries that could change our way of thinking and even discover planets habitable for humans. Our game presents this in an easy and inspiring way, encouraging teamwork in a relaxed manner.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our game is played in teams of 5 members, with a system of in-game communication to promote cooperation between the members. Before starting the game, the players need to choose from a list of different mission objectives (surface recognition, sample collecting, life searching, etc), and each player chooses a job on the ship and during the mission on the destination. They also choose a ship. Once that’s ready, the game starts.
The 5 astronauts spawn in the launch base, where each of them has to choose 7 items to carry with them, a limit established to force players to think strategically, simulating a weight limit as well. For that, they have to have in mind the objective they chose and their job.
After that, the astronauts get on the ship and prepare for launch. During this phase, each of them has to focus and complete their individual goals in order to launch the rocket properly.
After leaving Earth’s atmosphere, the players have to keep doing individual tasks linked to their job, until they get to the destination, which is either the Moon or Mars at first, but possibly other planets or asteroids with later updates. Once they get to the final destination, comes the landing, a phase similar to the launching.
In the destination, the players now have to complete the mission. Not only that, but they also have to worry about injuries, oxygen levels, dangerous terrain, etc. They carry an oxygen tank in the ship with enough for the crew for a few months in-game, depending on the ship they choose. Each player has a role in the mission in order to achieve the goal.
Goal achieved, the first three steps repeat, with a few differences during launching and landing because of a different gravity and atmosphere. The game ends back in NASA’s base, with the goal hopefully completed, and the players accumulate “space dust”, which is the game money. That can be used to purchase new astronaut suits, items to use in future missions, more advanced rockets that can be used to go to further planets, etc.
The game is going to be made using Voxels, in order to achieve a better interaction with terrain, a closer approach to real life and the visuals we desire for our game.
Space Agency Data
We used pictures taken on the Moon as a reference to make the game environment, music from one of the videos made available for our game and information from NASA's database to look up astronaut functions and the controls on the spacecraft and objectives of different space missions.
Rocket used as inspiration for the game rocket.
Moon surface used as reference
Hackathon Journey
We chose this challenge because we like games, missions and we have a dream of one day going to space and bringing our game to real life. In this two-day journey, we had many difficulties, the main one was the time, as we had to organize ourselves quickly and use the resources available at the time. In order to give our best, we learned a lot about programs we didn't know about, such as game-making engines, and mainly improved our teamwork. We would like to thank Marco Linhares and our COTUCA school for presenting this NASA challenge and providing us with a weekend full of hard work and satisfaction for the work delivered.
References
Reference sites:
- https://sa-2019.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/NASAs_Open_Data_Universe.pdf
- https://data.nasa.gov/
- https://images.nasa.gov/details-NHQ202109270009
- https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/sampreq/requestdates.cfm
- https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut_ranks_and_positions#Positions
- https://images-assets.nasa.gov/video/0091%20NEA%20Scout%20Music%20Rev29%2002102021/0091%20NEA%20Scout%20Music%20Rev29%2002102021~orig.mp4
Resources used:
- Core Games
- Animaker
- Wix.com
- MediBang Paint Pro
- Sony Vegas 18.0
Tags
#Artemis #Game #Moon #Mars #SkyIsNotTheLimit #FogueteNãoTemRé
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.