Cast Away| Breakthrough
Breakthrough
Cast Away
Summary
Cast Away is a CLI game, written in Python without the use of any animation or gaming libraries.It has physics, objects, collisions, drag and other forces all programmed in by hand.The game is space-themed and has intergalactic objects, black-holes with large gravity and aliens as obstacles, while the player has a heat-shield, a warp-drive rocket and bullets at their disposal. Boosts that use faster-than-usual solar sail propulsion appear on-screen, but are they a powerup or an enemy?
How I Addressed This Challenge
The project aims to educate its audience about propulsion in space by means of an engaging game that depicts the differences in speed of the various propulsion systems. The player uses the normal propulsion by default, and can switch to solar sails by colliding with the BOOST objects on-screen. They can switch to warp-drive that makes them skip all obstacles by pressing a key and answering a trivia question about these propulsion systems.
How I Developed This Project
The project was developed in Python, without using any gaming or animation libraries. We wanted to program all the physics from scratch, and we kept it terminal-based for easy of running it - there are hardly any external dependencies.
Games are always a fun and exciting way to learn, and building one from scratch has its own appeal. We wanted to use this appeal of games to educate people about space, and that's what drove us.
How I Used Space Agency Data in This Project
The NASA data sources were used to extract data about the questions that the game asks, as well as in general to define the setting of the game. The relative speeds of the various propulsion systems in the game are loosely based on this data, although modified to ensure play-ability.
Project Demo
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IqC34cxH-3qqd60aj_VMXHrDZdb2q3z7ZpgV88Mn3K8/edit?usp=sharing
Project Code
Data & Resources
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140000851.pdf