At the beginning of Week 8, our team returned from spring break to the ETC. With the start of the second half of the semester, we wrapped up work for our first prototype, payload packing, in order to focus on our other two prototypes, the AR moon colony and mission control.

AR Moon Colony  

During Week 8, we continued development on the AR moon colony. Systems, such as copy and delete, were integrated into the build. A palette of tools (including copy, move, and delete) was created at the side of the play area. 

While we were testing the AR moon colony internally, we discovered that the visual changes in the scene were too small to be easily noticed. Thus, we attempted to solve this problem by first scaling up the hex grid and buildings. However, there were still visibility issues. We then adjusted the colors to make them more saturated before playing with the skybox and lighting in the scene. We were able to improve the visibility and appearance within the scene, but will still continue to adjust the colors and lighting in the future. 

Mission Control

Mission control is the third prototype that we are developing for the Moonshot Museum. Due to team limitations and concerns about technology, we had put mission control on the back burner for the first half of the semester. During the second half of the semester, we will now be moving mission control back into focus. 

Overall, mission control is centered around highlighting the role that Astrobotic’s mission control has on the success of lunar missions. The experience will happen in the theater and involve 9 to 12 guests plus one facilitator.The guests will be split into three groups and need to cooperate in order to complete the mission. 

With help from Pete Frye, an engineering manager at Astrobotic, we determined that the three groups are Communications, Mechanics, and Payloads. Communications will be responsible for ensuring that the lander remains connected to the mission control team on Earth. Mechanics will be responsible for monitoring mechanical systems and guiding the lander into lunar orbit before landing on the Moon. Payloads will monitor the condition of the payloads and deploy the payloads at the specified times. 

We are planning on implementing mission control using AirConsole. While we initially had concerns about whether it would be possible to playtest using AirConsole, we were able to figure out how to connect people’s phones to a Unity test file. Thus, we are confident that AirConsole will be a viable tech solution for mission control.

Review & Looking Ahead

For Week 8, we were able to continue moving forward with our prototypes. We implemented more key systems to the AR moon colony and made some visual adjustments to the scene. Additionally, we also began developing the general experience for mission control and confirmed that AirConsole is a viable technology for this experience. 

However, we still have more details that need to be ironed out, especially in regards to mission control. Additionally, we felt that we had neglected to playtest early during the first half of the semester and we want to take steps to rectify the lack of playtesting in the second half of the semester.

In Week 9, half of our team will be attending GDC (Game Developer Conference) and other conferences. With that in consideration, our workload for Week 9 will have to be adjusted. While we can do some limited implementation, playtesting and documentation will be a focus for Week 9.