NACA

http://astrovival.earth/

https://youtu.be/L0XMVVyIkpY

General description

Astrovival is an uncompromising space survival game full of educative topics.

You play as an astronaut, who has been sent on a space mission from earth with a single task: to last as long as possible and use all his knowledge to do so. Astronaut must use all tools available to continuously explore the dangers of space and live on the edge of what is known to us.

Enter a massive space outside of the Earth’s atmosphere full of other planets, stars and even galaxies. Manage your food supplies, filter water and exercise to stay fit while maintaining your spaceflight lifestyle. Have fun as you explore the barriers and problems of living far from the Earth.

Key Features:

• Unrelenting Survival & Space Exploration: No hand holding. No help. Start with only seeds and plant, harvest, filter water, exercise to survive.
• Galaxy and Space Visuals: 2D character and entities forming unique space awareness.
• A lot of educational survival topics: Learn spaceflight terminology and meet the stresses that come with it in an simple and exciting way.

Overview

Astrovival challenges the player to survive in a completely new environment for as long as possible. In this mode, the only way the game ends is with the player’s return to earth, because of starvation, dehydration, or the lack of exercising. Luckly, the player can return back to space where they can try again and learn from their mistakes.

Plot

The spaceflight game plot centers around the astronaut, who was sent into space from the Earth with only goal to explore the barriers and problems of a spaceflight lifestyle and learn what it really takes to survive in the outside world from the Earth’s atmosphere. The astronaut will begin to understand the challenges that come with spaceflight and take advantage of the space station’s equipment to survive.

Tools used

Unity

Unity is a framework that can be used to create game scenes that are both 2D and 3D. It can also be used to develop apps that are focused on business-related topics. There are various applications that require to interact with 2D/3D space, such as training simulations and first-responder tools.

C#

The C# programming language is a modern and type-safe alternative to other languages. It can be used to build robust and secure applications that run on .NET. It is a part of the C family, and it is widely used by developers who are familiar with other languages such as Java, C++, and JavaScript.

Visual Studio

An integrated development environment, or an IDE, is a feature-filled program that can support various aspects of software creation. One of the most common tools used by developers is the Visual Studio. This is a creative launching pad that can be used to create, edit, and build software. It additionally has a variety of additional features that can enhance the development process.

Photoshop

Adobe's Photoshop is a popular image editing software that can be used to create various types of graphics. It has a variety of image editing features that can be used for different types of purposes.

Git

It is a version control system, which means that a local project is a complete version control repository. These local repositories make it easy to work remotely. Developers commit their work locally, and then sync their copy of the repository with the copy on the server.

As the team of young ambitious members, we were not familiar with the field of life in space, so we first watched some educational videos about it. These were very entertaining and informative and gave us the motivation and strength for development. We were so immersed in this topic that ideas started appearing and we researched more specific topics.

We watched a video about the International Space Station toilet where ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti shows how to use the most unglamorous but often asked-about part of living on the International Space Station: the toilet. A fan creates suction to avoid smells and floating waste. Solid waste is stored and put in cargo ferries to burn up when the spacecraft leaves the Space Station. The astronaut urine is recycled – into drinking water.

We also took a looked at exercise machines aboard the space station where ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet gives a guided tour of the International Space Station’s exercise machines. Astronauts spend around two hours every day doing fitness routines.

And lastly, we paid the most attention to the hazards of human spaceflight which included topics about radiation, isolation and confinement, distance from earth, gravity or lack of thereof and hostile/closed environments. Beside all that we also read how essential is human research to space exploration and all the achievements connected with those breath-taking researches and discoveries.

International Space Station toilet tour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-65mBQ7s_Q

Exercise Machines Aboard the Space Station

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oN-XHKcCIY

5 Hazards of Human Spaceflight

https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/5-hazards-of-human-spaceflight

At the start of the NASA International Space Apps Challenge, we spent at least an hour simply brainstorming ideas that were based on the challenge we chose to compete in. It involved a lot of goal setting and throwing out game ideas that we thought would not be as exciting to develop and present at the end. We had a lot of different and outrageous ideas, but we could not come across one that was somehow realistically possible to develop in 48 hours and to be fun and educative. So, as we already knew about the idea of the challenge we chose, we toyed with the idea of creating a game based on coming across the barriers that someone who is living in the space needs to overcome through different tasks.

After we had the general concepts down, we still took some time to think and discuss about how the gameplay would progress that would make it enjoyable beside all that educational part. We also had to figure out how to design the game not just programmatically but in artistical way, so others would understand intuitively what this game is all about. If we put all that factors aside, we also needed to make a reasonable solution that meets the challenge’s considerations and put it in a game in just 48 hours which required all members to work hard and fulfill each part of the team.

Thankfully our team included an artist that was well rounded in the designing part and connected the programmatical part of the project with astonishing designs that really made the strong establishment between the “backend” and the visual representation of the entire project.

Filtering water. Growing plants. Exploring and laboratory research. All of this and more is a part of living in the distance of the Earth’s planet. Stop paying attention and you may suddenly encounter a lack of food. Stop exercising and you may lose bone density and muscle mass.

In Astrovival, you are the astronaut who is willing to do the work required to survive as long as possible. Planting seeds, harvesting plants, filtering water puts you closer to this impossible-seeming goal. But can you manage all this work required and take time for exercising?

Do you even have the motivation and self-esteem to be on the edge of surviving? Will the decisions you make hurt you? Will you consistently work hard just to overcome all the problems and stresses you come across just to survive as the Earth’s outsider?

We must say that our team worked extremely well together. Urban, Anže and Gorazd primarily worked making the programmatical part of the game project and on the other side Timotej worked extremely hard to connect all those parts together with art that will make and feel the game as enjoyable and picturesque as possible.

We weren’t completely new to this game development part because we already competed in some local game jams, but we take every opportunity to learn something new and increase our horizon of knowledge.

A lot of indie developers who became 'Overnight Successes' were working at it for ten years.”

Dan Adelman

There were a lot of teams competing in this Space Apps Challenge and even that we probably were one of the youngest competitors and relatively new to this scene we managed to complete the challenge and expand our knowledge through this entire event. Beside all the computer science knowledge we acquired through this trip, we must say that we really learned a lot about the general principals of space and more specifically we learned a lot of new things about space life and difficulties that come across this exciting lifestyle. Based on all that we are all satisfied and happy to compete in this enormous event and are looking forward to the next one.

You might not be able to outthink, outmarket or outspend your competition, but you can outwork them.

Lou Holtz

Project Repository

Link to repository

https://github.com/AnzeBlaBla/NACA-game

General References

Unity

https://unity.com/

Freesound

https://freesound.org/

GitHub

https://github.com/

Visual Studio

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/

Photoshop

https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html

Adobe Premiere

https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html

Porkbun

https://porkbun.com/

#gamedev, #unity, #makegames, #programming, #2d, #biologysuperhero, #spaceappschallenge, #art