Fwd: Question about the Wednesday 16th Game Pitch Presentation and Submittal
Jason Chiu
From: Greg Wessman <gregw...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 5:08 PM
Subject: Question about the Wednesday 16th Game Pitch Presentation and Submittal
To: jch...@uci.edu, sto...@uci.edu
Cc: "Dr. Don Black" <dr...@dcgfx.com>
Hi Jason and Conner,
After Dr. Don Black and I pitched our game concept at the Wednesday, Oct 15th VGDC meeting, I'm now wondering about the next steps and who/where/ how we should go about further listing our game concept for the club review (besides just verbally at the club meeting) and being placed into the selection process. Please note that Dr. Don did not formally submit for the Sunday Oct 12th night deadline, as we were not sure about pitching on Wednesday night from a "company's perspective" as not being a student submittal.
Please note that our goal is to develop a worthy 'game concept' that could represent the "first step" towards a further 'serious game' to be planned for in the following year. The 2nd year project will be proposed as a "Satellite Simulation" that would include the VGDC along with students from other engineering disciplines and departments at the University. The Satellite Simulation project would include a higher-fidelity representation of an actual conceptual satellite mission and associated perceived flight hardware. Original team members from the initial game design team would be encouraged to continue on for the simulation project. Subsequently in a third year, the Satellite Simulation project will lend itself to the beginnings of a "Detailed-Design Specification" of actual small satellites for submittal to the NASA "Small Spacecraft Technology Program", ultimately having students building and launching "real satellites" (reference: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2013/apr/HQ_13-094_CubeSats_Partners.html).
For this year's VGDC project the initial title of our game is "Planetoidal Resources". The suggested premise is stated as follows:
Planetoidal Resources is a space game that involved an "Autonomous Space System" that includes a "Mothership" satellite that deploys and tends to several miniaturized satellites, otherwise known as "CubeSats" or "SmallSats". The Mothership satellite is the main communications platform, propulsion system, and power source that also charges the CubeSats as a docking station. The Mothership autonomously searches for potential targets in the asteroid belt or circumvents in the rings of Saturn. Once a potential target asteroid is determined, the Mothership deploys the various CubeSats that orbit the asteroid in a swarm to take pictures and to make scientific measurements, also taking samples and searching for molecular and chemical resources, e.g., water, compounds, minerals, metals, etc. During and after all objectives are reached for that particular asteroid, the CubeSats must return to the Mothership for a re-charge or be stranded for a Robotic Tender CubeSat to go out and retrieve it. The Mothership then logs any finds, categorizes and catalogs the asteroid resources, transmits the data back to earth, and moves onto the next potential asteroid, all the while maintaining its own resources and avoiding other asteroids that may collide.
The object of the game is to have players acting as the 'Ground System Operators' planning and scheduling high-level goals, while determining, building and creating the correct low-level mission objectives into a library, to compile and upload commands and download telemetry to/from the Autonomous Space System (like putting a puzzle together from a list of individual satellite flight operation procedures). The Ground System Operators must also monitor the health and status of the Autonomous Space System, Payloads, and Control Network. The overall goal of the game is to achieve the most usable data about the asteroids for scientists back on earth to study and eventually return to for mining operations (think of that as another mission that mines the resources and to provide fuel for the Mothership and constellation of CubeSats).
Dr. Don and I would choose to act as "Domain Experts" and consultants on general content and activities for the game concepts - leaving all design considerations to be left to the students, i.e. what programming languages or "style" the game should be perceived, such as a 2D side or vertically-scrolling game vs. a 3D game developed in the Unity or Unreal game engine, or preferably a combination of both. An suggestion would be the Mothership flying amongst the asteroids in a 3D environment and a 2D vertically-scrolling environment presented while mapping the surfaces of the asteroids.
You know Dr. Don Black as an advisor for the VGDC and the IEEE GameSig. You can view some of my credentials on my LinkedIn profile at: www.linkedin.com/in/gregwessman/.
Hope you find this fascinating and please let us know the next steps.
Thank you,
Greg Wessman