High-Level Project Summary
When brainstorming solutions to the challenge, we focused on creating a game that people of all interests would want to play. Our game has a mystery, a 1000-year-old incomplete prophecy that will run parallel to our action, which will be our levels. Ours is a 2D game that incorporates history. Level 1 features the Hans Lippershey telescope, the first telescope ever built by mankind. As you complete quests, solve puzzles, fight in battles, free yourself from escape rooms, you will earn coins that you can use to upgrade your telescope until you reach the final stage, building the JWST. At this stage, you will be able to complete the prophecy and understand what it meant.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
Our game begins with our character stargazing one usual night, when a dragon appears with a message from its master, a chinese monk. It read, "The Start Is Where It Ends..Like the phoenix will you rise from the ashes, but only if you gaze..." This is an incomplete prophecy that has been revealed to our character.
One night, our character sees a strange constellation in the sky, one that he has never seen before and one that contradicts with the information present in his space-charts. This is where the mystery begins..
In order to clearly look at the constellation, you need a telescope. Our game is designed in the form of levels where you will complete quests, solve puzzles, fight in battles, free yourself from escape rooms, etc. This way, you will earn coins using which you will buy a telescope. In the first level, you have the Hans Lippershey telescope, built in the early 1600s, which was the first telescope built by mankind. As you proceed to further levels, your telescope will be updated and you will be able to see the sky alot better. You will go from this telescope all the way to sir Isaac Newton's reflecting telescope, to the breakthrough of radio telescopes, to the Hubble telescope, till you reach the final stage, building the strongest telescope ever built, the JWST. As you point it towards the constellation, the 1000-year-old mystery will be revealed and secrets of the cosmos will be uncovered.
Building the JWST will be the final mission of the first version of our game. We plan to release further versions in which the JWST's immense power and amazing capabilities will be showcased. Different levels with unique mysteries will be added to the game, and each level will be about a particular component of the JWST. To explain this, we'll take an example of a level where using the IR technology present in the JWST, you will be able to look at a planet millions of light years away and detect an alien attack that is being planned against you. To protect yourself and your men, you will make use of the IR technology. Depending on how efficiently you use it, you will earn coins and the next level will be unlocked.
Through this game, we hope to raise awareness and help people from all age groups and professions learn about the JWST, so they too along with the telescope can travel billions of light years away.
For our prototype, we used https://www.figma.com/
Our game hasn't yet been developed, our team is working on it.
Space Agency Data
Our idea for our game was to proceed it according to the factual historical progression of telescopes. For this to come to reality, we needed credible data, that we found on the following;
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/features/F_NASA_Great_Observatories_PS.html
Our game is mainly about the James Webb Space Telescope, information about is has been gathered from;
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb
https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/jwst/
To show our players what the JWST looks like, we added to our game its pictures that we took from;
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/multimedia/images.html
To give an idea to our players about how the other telescopes of NASA were and how significantly better is the JWST, we added pictures captured by several other telescopes;
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/images/index.html
https://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images
Hackathon Journey
Our hackathon journey was full of experiences, challenges and enthusiasm. We were able to comprehend difficulties and create solutions in as little time as feasible because of this journey. It taught us how to improve and innovate within a team.
Meeting new people with diverse views and viewpoints was a fantastic experience at this hackathon. Sharing and discussing ideas with a large number of people pushes you to move on and achieve something massive and amazing to bring about positive improvements for yourself and others around you.
Because we are all very curious about what is beyond this vast sky, this hackathon provided an excellent opportunity to go deeper into it and learn more about it. It made us more conscious of how huge this world is, with so many possibilities and concepts still to be uncovered. This hackathon also allowed us to learn more about game development and mechanics.
Overall, it was an excellent chance for us to grow and learn while also improving our talents with a large group of individuals. This hackathon taught us not just about the James Webb Space Telescope and game mechanics, but also about working in a team and producing high-quality result in a short amount of time! We discovered a new and distinct aspect of ourselves as a result of this hackathon, which will influence us as people.
References
www.earthboundtext.com
https://undertale.com
www.avatarsinpixels.com
https://icons-for-free.com/mario_pixel_icon_collection-icons-set/
Tags
#gamedevelopment #story #inspiration