Project Astrobee

Project Summary

Video Record: Robie Grasso. Narrator/presenter: Juan Ferrer.

Description

Project Astrobee is a prototype project. We partnered with NASA to create an educational game that targeted young adolescents. The initially targeted platform was mobile. Since no one had mobile development experience, we prototyped and tested it on PC instead.

Game Engine: Unity.

Duration: 4 months.

Project Development

NASA project

In the beginning, every member (including myself) pitched ideas about the art style, gameplay loops, gameplay mechanics, and target audience. For the first three weeks, everyone focused on building their small prototype for the presentation. The result was mixed since everyone had different ideas about the control, core mechanics, player movement, player controls, and camera angle.

The slides above are my intial pitches for this project. The problem with my early pitches was the scope; it was too big for a student project. However, the idea of a "CCTV camera" was made into the final build.

2021-06-08 17-18-58.mp4

Another idea I had was to make a scripting game. Players would use scripting commands to tell the Astrobee what to do. The gameplay was inspired by Rabbids Coding: Programming with Rabbids.

Unfortunately, my idea was far different from every else's since it had a different control scheme and camera. It also required a significant amount of programming aid, and we only had one programmer on our team. There wasn't enough manpower and time to make it work.

In the fourth week, we decided to confine to a single version. We chose Juan Ferrer's prototype as the base for future development. I was asked to create a mechanic that had something to do with sound. I started designing a pattern matching mechanic.

While onboard on ISS, astronauts need to pay close attention to problems such as equipment failure and air leaks. As an astrobee, you have a module that detects and analyze noise in the environment. Use noise to investigate any hardware issues that may have occurred on ISS. Players need to analyze the noise and match it with the correct sound profile to track the source of the noise.

2021-06-08 16-45-21.mp4

I was responsible for making the pattern-matching mechanic and noise tracker in C#. I designed all the UI elements in Photoshop and animated them in Unity. I also scripted the player's UI and buttons. Additionally, I helped with bug fixes and implementing mechanics into the final build.

Link to playable build

Project Astrobee Credit

Lead Designer & Mission Designer

Juan Ferrer

Scanner Designer & Scripter

Robie Ferrer

Animation & UI Designer

Vasanthan Nalinasegrem

Solar Panel Designer & Scripter

Kaleb Fick

Sound Wave Designer & Scripter

Tianzhi Shen

Music & SFX

Rulon Feeney

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