Space Orbit

Space Orbit is a small 2D game, where your goal is to successfully launch a rocket ship into orbit. The game is developed to be "educational", we help players understand the real-life concepts of gravitation.

Goal

The main goal of the game is to reproduce a target apsis (periapsis and apoapsis) with a rocket ship having varying degrees of fuel capacity or weight loaded.

After you exit the atmosphere, you are controlling your ship in space. To win the game, you have to reproduce the required periapsis and apoapsis. You will lose if you run out of fuel.

Instructions

HUD

The left bar (with green to red colours) represents the power of the thruster. The right one represents the fuel gauge.

Controls

- **Z**: Increase thrust | **S**: Decrease thrust

- **Q**: Rotate to the left | **D**: Rotate to the right

How does it work?

Gravitational forces are simulated using the real law of universal gravitation. We tweaked some values such as the gravitational constant and mass of objects to work in a 2D game environment.

Signification of each element:

• G = Gravitational constant
• F = Gravitational force acting between two objects
• M_A = Mass of object 1
• M_B = Mass of object 2
• d² = Distance between the centres of their masses²

This is basically how the game works and can simulate gravitation between multiple bodies (although in the current prototype, only two bodies are being simulated).

Due to the universal law of gravity to simulate the game, the orbit is not deterministic. Therefore, the future positions of the ship are constantly being recalculated to predict the future position of the ship. This part of the game was a bit of a technical hurdle, because this required us to have a balance between precision and performance. Thankfully, it stayed pretty simple due to the game being 2D.

Background

The game has been developed with Unity and is a prototype, which means you can only play one level. This game has been developed as part of a module of my Master in Video Game. The goal was to develop a video game featuring interesting mathematical or physics mechanics, as well as having educational purposes.

Authors

• Adrien Dudon: programmer
• Damian Lallement: programmer
• Elise Houart**: Game Artist
• Inès Siméon**: Game Artist
• Justine Brismé: Game Artist (ArtStation)
• Romain Rittier**: Game Artist (ArtStation)