I had my 1 to 1 session with James on Thursday (22/11/18). After admitting I was stuck with my game, we thought we could put it aside for now, and think of something else. We came up with a new idea that doesn’t require me to throw everything away from the very beginning, but rather to use my research differently.
The game:
You are creating stars by modifying their properties. The stars are part of Constellations. When you finish all the stars of a Constellation, you get rewards (e.g.: astronomical data, mythology/stories, daily horoscope).
Essential Experience: Allow the player to relax by performing tasks which lead to an interesting outcome.
I have also chosen my Major: UIX Design and my Minor: Animations.
Stars’ Properties
Since in my game, the player will have to manipulate the star’s properties to achieve something, I thought I would look into how these properties work, what influences the brightness, luminosity, radius, chemical position, mass, temperature, etc., how you calculate the distance to a star and what are the layers of one. I believe that in order to make a game about stars, I need to understand at least these things.
Even though there are a lot of things that don’t link in my head about star right now, I think I have enough research to make a game and create the mechanics of it. I will only look deeper into the subjects that turn up to have a greater importance later.
Constellations
After finishing a Constellation, the player will have to get a reward. I looked into what Constellations are, and where they are, and I found out that there are 36 constellations in the northern sky, and 52 in the southern sky. However, there are some constellations that shift between the night sky.
When thinking of the game, I had the idea of having to match the phone’s position and stars to the actual place on the sky where the constellation is (or would be, because we don’t see many of them, but it would be fun to know where they are). However, this isn’t possible because James said (???????????).
After giving that idea up (this means I don’t have to only use the Northern Sky’s Constellations), I thought it would be fair to take 1 circumpolar constellation for each sky (Northern and Southern), and one for each seasonal constellation. After some research, I picked the six constellations: Ursa Major (Northern Sky), Centaurus (Southern Sky), Orion (Winter), Hydra (Spring), Hercules (Summer), and Pegasus (Autumn).
In addition, when looking for interesting facts about the constellations, I found that in Greek mythology, the people or animals represented by the constellation have all been ‘sent’ there for a reason. I think this is interesting and I want to make this my reward for the player: the story of how things got trapped in the sky.
I now have a proper solid game idea and I'm so thankful to James for helping me. I can't wait to get started on work.