With ¼ walkarounds behind us, our team began the process of building our initial prototypes. From the feedback we received at ¼ walkarounds, we had to carefully evaluate our scope before beginning. After reevaluating our priorities, we started work on game design and tech exploration.

Dealing with Scope

One of the major concerns with our project had been the scope. Originally, our team had ambitious concepts for each of our three prototypes. However, those ambitions were not practical in the context of a single semester.

Thus, we had to reign in our scope. While innovative technologies were something our team wanted to explore, it was not as important as what experience each prototype would deliver. Our prototypes were intended to be used to help the Moonshot Museum prove to funding sources that the idea should be developed into a full installation. Thus, being able to show that our experiences were enjoyable and informative becomes increasingly important. 

Changes we made to reflect this new focus included:

• Shelving smartphone browser AR as a potential tech solution for the clean room
• Reevaluating our deliverables to be less focused on tech 
• Anticipating a greater emphasis on playtesting in the future

Tech Exploration

One of the priorities for our team was determining what technology we would use for our prototypes. In particular, we had identified the Tilt Five, an AR tabletop gaming device, for the AR Moon Colony and AirConsole for Mission Control. However, we still had several questions about how the technology functioned and whether they would prove viable for our purposes.

Cleo, one of our programmers, was able to investigate the Tilt Five and its functionalities, figuring out how to connect multiple glasses/wands amongst other things. For the Tilt Five, we also had a meeting with a representative from the Tilt Five company. During the meeting, we discussed the company’s willingness to work with the Moonshot Museum as well as covering other concerns regarding durability and replacement cost.

Tairan, another one of our programmers, looked into AirConsole. Functionally, AirConsole is an excellent fit for Mission Control. It allows a large number of users to join the same game without having to download an app. Furthermore, AirConsole is also affordable, coming in at only $2.99 per month. However, we had concerns about how easy it would be for us to playtest using AirConsole. Seemingly, we would have to publish our game before being able to test on phones. 

Visit to the Moonshot Museum

On Friday, February 10th, our team once again visited the Moonshot Museum. This time we were joined by both our faculty instructors, Scott Stevens and Shirley Saldamarco, as well as visiting ETC faculty, Anthony Daniels. 

During the museum visit, we were able to see the lunar lander in the Moonshot Museum’s clean room. In our previous visit, the clean room had been empty. Thanks to Mike and the other staff at the museum we were allowed to see Astrobotic’s mission control and were even able to briefly talk with one of the employees. 

Furthermore, our team had brought the Tilt Five with us to the museum. Both our team and our client had been excited at the possibilities offered by the Tilt Five. As such, we wanted to show our client what using the technology would actually be like. We were able to demo the Tilt Five to our client as well as explain both what was exciting about the technology and what were the potential drawbacks of the technology.

Review & Looking Ahead

For Week 4, our team was able to focus on what our priorities for this project should be. We were able to make next steps by exploring what technology we might use and by starting to design/build prototypes of our experiences. Finally, we capped off the week with a trip to the Moonshot Museum that allowed us to see our subject matter (the lander and mission control) in person. 

There were also some setbacks in Week 4 as well. While AirConsole had many of the features we’re looking for, the inability to easily playtest may prove to be too much of a drawback. In that case, we may have to reevaluate our plans for Mission Control. 

In Week 5, we are aiming to have a version of Payload Packing that is more feature complete and is able to be playtested. We will also begin developing concrete game mechanics for both AR Moon Colony and Mission Control.