High-Level Project Summary
We created a visual novel where the player is an astronaut traveling to Mars. The player has injectable serums with the names of various organisms and has to correctly identify which one to use to survive various obstacles to make it the end of the journey, where a surprise awaits. Throughout the game, the user learns more about different hazards of space travel and what organisms have the ability to survive them, hopefully inspiring them to learn more about space biology.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
The project was created using RenJS, a visual novel engine based off of Ren'Py. It is hosted on Heroku. Tools used included Node.js and Express. Creative Commons licensed assets were found and a lot of background graphics were generated using DALL-E, a machine learning model developed by OpenAI to generate digital images from natural language descriptions.
We hope that players enjoy playing the game and learn something about space biology!
Space Agency Data
We used NASA Space Biology Program and Human Research Program data as well as CSA's space healthcare report to understands the dangers of spaceflight.
Hackathon Journey
We learned a lot about space biology from this project. We also learned interesting facts about Mars, such as the fact that it has about a third of the gravity of Earth, its fairly cold and also that a round trip would take two and half to three years.
References
RenJS.V2 created by lunafromthemoon
In collaboration with RockDaFox
Inspired by Ren'Py
Powered by PhaserJS
Background art and cgs by
DALL-E
konett
NASA, ESA, Zolt G. Levay (STScI)
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
D Mitriy, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Characters by
DALL-E
Charat Genesis
Music
Dreamy Flashback, Space Fighter Loop, Neon Laser Horizon, Happy Bee, Dangerous
by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons,
By Attribution 4.0 License
Information from:
http://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/olm/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_121
https://uk.whales.org/whales-dolphins/how-do-dolphins-sleep
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/facts/tardigrades-water-bears
Tags
#game #space #biology