Week 8/9 - Escape the Void

This was a two week project, part 8 of 8 for a rapid prototyping class. This was a group project with 5 people. 

The overall scene that we wanted to create would be one where the player fully believes they are in space, and in danger. There are a lot of elements that we wanted to evoke, like the size/scale of space, the emptiness, terror, etc. of the void, as well as the lack of sound and gravity in open space itself. To that end, what we’ve come up with for an idea is the desperate struggle to reach an escape pod in a spaceship that’s under attack. The player must struggle through and escape the ship, through several different distinct rooms, each with a purpose. 

The player will wake up in a cryo-pod (R1) amid a heavily muffled blare of sound and noise, adding a lot of filtering that slowly fades away to a small muffle in accordance with the blurriness of their vision. An animation will play where the player look can around, able to see out the window to the left, and can see a blaring alarm over an exit door. The player pushes their way out of the escape pod, stumbling forward. They are then able to look around the room and try to escape. In the room are 4 other cryo pods, one or two open, another couple shattered. At some point, a very large ship far off in the distance explodes, causing a huge explosion and brilliant flash of light, washing over the room, potentially blinding the player. You push your way into a hallway filled with closed lockers, (R2) and a series of hanging space suits. The room has some trash and other objects on the ground and benches nearby the closed lockers. You cannot progress into the next room without a suit on - perhaps as you approach, you get a dialogue that states you cannot progress without a spacesuit, and can see a window in the door that shows a large hole punched in the side of the ship, and flashing lights to indicate damage to the room. 

When you suit up and are able to go into that room (R3), it sucks you towards the hole with a gush of air, and you’re suddenly in a room without gravity. All objects in the hallway rush towards the door and have their gravity off if they cross the threshold, moving and bumping off of any objects. The player cannot leave through the hole but any other object that may go through can. The destroyed room does not have sound, as it does not have oxygen in it to transmit sound. The only noise you can hear is a whoosh of air as you travel as well as a breathing noise, which scales up in volume, as it’s the only thing we can hear aside from EXTREMELY muffled and distant explosion noises. This room was a mess hall, with a table and chairs bolted to the ground, as well as food, silverware, etc. floating in space. From there, the player is able to get through the room to the next door, which hangs open. (R4) As they enter, their gravity turns on, and you are instructed to press a button to seal off the hallway door into the destroyed room. As you do so, you get another gust of air upon sealing indicating the room now has oxygen. As that happens, sound comes back on, and you can hear the alarms and explosions sounding again with more crispness. Breathing returns to a small noise rather than the primary. 

Finally, you get to a room with a series of escape hatches, 2 on each side. (R5) 2 on the right are destroyed. This room has gravity. As you enter, the second to last hatch closes shut and an indicator next to it switches to “locked,” indicating someone has just entered into it. The door on the other side of this room leads to the flight deck, but the door is completely destroyed with fire behind it. 

There is one escape pod remaining. As you enter into it (R6), you get latched in and cannot move, but can still look around within a radius. From there, you get launched from the ship, and the other escape pod launches shortly thereafter. You watch the ship explode as it fades into the distance, hit by a huge beam of light from far away. As you continue to fall away from the ship, you also see small beams of light fly by you and the other escape pod - one eventually hits the other escape pod, which also explodes. You begin to enter the atmosphere and black out.

Division of labor:

Charles Schwimmer - Producer, Level design, room modeling, texturing, button creation, final level assembling, bugfixing, lighting

Aidan Moreau - grey box assets, player controller, sound implementation, final level assembling

Brett Fargo - sound design, final level assembling, graybox assets

Mengze Wu - final asset creation

Kehan Gong - final asset creation