Finding Nova

In this third-person 2D adventure game, players help Nova, a girl from planet Vectra, leave familiarity to find adventure across the stars. Along the way, she finds herself and meaning in her life.

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Inspiration

We wanted to create a game inspired stylistically by popular 2D games such as Stardew Valley and Minecraft. Narratively, we were inspired by our personal lives. As college students, we feel that leaving home and going to college begins an incredibly transitory period of our lives. Discussing our experiences, we found themes of friendship, finding yourself, and taking life day by day. We wanted to create a game that was fun for players, but allowed them to reflect on these themes in their own lives.

What it does

It is a 2D third person that is hopefully enjoyable to play and causes the user to reflect. The game has two main levels.

How we built it

We used Godot and GDScript. We created many of the pixel art assets using software such as https://www.piskelapp.com/ and Pixelorama. We also used an Universal LPC Spritesheet Generator (credits listed below) to generate the characters in the game. The second level uses a Dialogue Manager plugin for Godot so players could interact and engage in conversation with our NPCs. We used the Tech_Club_01 font from Fontesk.com.

Challenges we ran into

Because none of us had experience with Godot, it took a while to understand some of the syntax and how to implement all of the features we had planned. Creating the dialogue system and our art assets became a long and tedious effort. Also figuring how to import character sprites and images provided us difficulty in completing our project. Working on three separate devices, we also ran into conflicts merging our project using Github, especially because there were so many files and assets involved in the game. There were some instances in which between Godot and Github, the entire project would disappear entirely from one of our computers. We would have to revert the changes and manually edit files until we could merge and proceed (which gave us a newfound appreciation for version control). Additionally, one of our members was working on an older version of Godot, so we found issues with compatibility when merging the two project versions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team consisted of a Mechanical Engineering major, a Computer Science major, and a Digital Arts and Sciences major. Two of us had never participated in a hackathon before and two of us had not really worked with game development before. We used Godot, an engine that none of us had experience with and created art assets ourselves, which we also did not have experience doing. We are all incredibly proud of the final product we were able to create given these factors. Our game has the overall theme, mood, and aesthetic that we initially wanted.

What we learned

From the beginning we learned how it is important to define and communicate our goals in the initial steps of the project. By timing ourselves to come up with ideas together, we were able to arrive to a clear messagem which resulted in a shared excitement for our project. As we were learning Godot, we relied heavily on each other and learned how to work and support each other. A lot of our knowledge and resources came from useful Youtube videos and Godot tutorial guides. On the backend side, we learned what goes into a game when it comes implementing the assets. Additionally, we got more familiarized with Github and some of the issues that come with it. Lastly, we learned that when things may seem bleak, like a file not merging or a project disappearing, there is always a solution to be found.

What's next for Finding Nova

There are still many features we would ideally like to implement in Finding Nova. Our initial plan was to have at least three levels, with different lessons being learned in each of these that players can apply to real life. We would also create a more unified style system across levels and screens, with time to implement our own style in all of the assets. We could also potentially add more features to the gameplay, such as enemies or more negative consequences for our "life lessons."

Universal LPC SPritesheet Generator Credits: ody/bodies/male/light.png - Note: see details at https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-character-bases; 'Thick' Male Revised Run/Climb by JaidynReiman (based on ElizaWy's LPC Revised) - Licenses: - OGA-BY 3.0 - CC-BY-SA 3.0 - GPL 3.0 - Authors: - bluecarrot16 - JaidynReiman - Benjamin K. Smith (BenCreating) - Evert - Eliza Wyatt (ElizaWy) - TheraHedwig - MuffinElZangano - Durrani - Johannes Sjölund (wulax) - Stephen Challener (Redshrike) - Links: - https://opengameart.org/content/liberated-pixel-cup-lpc-base-assets-sprites-map-tiles - https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-medieval-fantasy-character-sprites - https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-male-jumping-animation-by-durrani - https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-runcycle-and-diagonal-walkcycle - https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-revised-character-basics - https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-be-seated - https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-runcycle-for-male-muscular-and-pregnant-character-bases-with-modular-heads - https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-jump-expanded - https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-character-bases

head/heads/human/male/light.png - Note: original head by Redshrike, tweaks by BenCreating, modular version by bluecarrot16 - Licenses: - OGA-BY 3.0 - CC-BY-SA 3.0 - GPL 3.0 - Authors: - bluecarrot16 - Benjamin K. Smith (BenCreating) - Stephen Challener (Redshrike) - Links: - https://opengameart.org/content/liberated-pixel-cup-lpc-base-assets-sprites-map-tiles - https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-character-bases

Built With

  • gith
  • godot
  • pixelorama
  • universal-lpc-sprite-sheet-character-generator
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