GUNTHER| Breakthrough
Breakthrough
Ground Zero: Earth's End Draws Near
Summary
Ground Zero is a 2D Action RPG where an astronaut must traverse the most dangerous area known to man: Space. The adventurer must travel through orbits with scientifically advanced warp drive technology to arrive at planets' surfaces to conduct missions that will save the earth from its demise; dodge asteroids, collect resources, and return safely from the vacuum of space.
How We Addressed This Challenge
An experience we've all had since we were young is playing Video Games,
therefore we created a video game that could both teach and inspire people of all ages to pursue space exploration, technology, and science.
We developed a game in which the player will have to explore different planets in order to save humanity in the game's narrative. The player must travel from planet to planet, dodging asteroids and experiencing the theoretical science of warp drives. Along with this, the player also goes through missions which are inspired by both the games of today and NASA's stories from space.
We aim to engage the player in interesting representations of the experiences that workers in space have to endure and go through in the name of science and humanity. We hope to illicit curiosity and pique the player's imagination of traversing space with next-gen technologies while tugging at the heartstrings with a short but captivating story.
How We Developed This Project
It was an interesting but curious Challenge
Our team chose this challenge as it was the closest to our hopes which were making a fun video game while answering and attempting to solve the challenge. Moreover, the topics of the challenge were something we all knew about but never deeply researched on which appealed to our curious minds.
We brainstormed our ideas and came up with a take on the challenge, took the ones we all agreed upon and enjoyed, then mixed and matched them with the guidance of a certain principle when designing the game:
Follow The Fun
The rough and grueling Process
Once we sat down and started working on the main idea, we began with a slow start as our roles' tasks were dependent and intertwined with each other. But as we continued working on it together (bringing each other up, actively asking each other questions and suggestions, and caring for one another's health), we got into the swing of things. While there were the occasional tiresome moments after finishing a mentally taxing job, after giving ourselves short healthy breaks, we persevered and kept pushing onwards until we finished the first iteration. It also helped that each member had different strengths so we were able to cover more ground in a short amount of time.
The Technicalities
Our game used a variety of tools. For our coding, we utilized the Unity Engine and its language, C#. For our graphics, a mix of Aseprite, Photoshop, and Illustrator was used in order to create every unique image in both our game and presentation. To create the music, we used an open source music maker, Bosca Ceoil.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
The team used data from NASA in order to design the visuals and gameplay for the game and its components. These information served as the grounding of our imagination for the events that happen within the game. Examples of these are mars' visuals, the ships' designs, and Venus' environment, with a few touches from our imagination and creative design to make things even more interesting. For the parts of the game that gives information about the planets, and parts of the universe, the team used NASA's open data archive with its abundant number of topics and subjects.
Example:
Venus Surface Image from NASA (https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_358.html)
Our Venus Surface Texture
Project Demo
Powerpoint:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jfOAPu6mAv0U9gAgzygog2t1ZA2bvU3a/view
Video (Not For Judging): https://youtu.be/tbOU9NyCNXc
Landing Page with Link to Game: https://sites.google.com/view/ground-zero/home
Code Repository:https://github.com/nixumie/groundzero
Data & Resources
Fonts Used:
- ThaleaFat (By TinyWorlds, free, itch.io)
- Mr. JUNKER MSX (By Void, or Francisco Beltran, free, itch.io, This font is released under the CC-BY License)
- ThatBoy (By Void, or Francisco Beltran, free, itch.io, This font is released under the CC-BY License)
References & NASA Data used for Design:
- https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23791
- https://www.mars-one.com/mission/the-technology
- https://www.space.com/16895-what-is-mars-madeof.html#:~:text=It%20is%20made%20up%20primarily,)%20thick%2C%20according%20to%20 NASA
- https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_358.html