The Evolution Of Stars by Dadeyemi
This is an educational game about the evolution of stars written in C# XNA where you play through the life cycle of a star and command the fundamental forces of nature to become a Neutron Star (as every star really wants to be a neutron star), aimed at the A-Level syllabus in the UK (16-18 yrs) I'm not technically a physicist so I used Wikipedia and http://www.astarmathsandphysics.com for research.
If your not interested in the physics you may like the many pretty particle animations such as the ones for the Supernova or Black hole and they are to a certain degree physically accurate animations so you should hopefully learn something watching them too.
Good look collecting all of the achievements! (the supernova, planetary nebula and black hole are the nicest animations IMO so its worth trying to get to them.)
GUIDE(SPOILER):
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A lot of people are missing some of the content so here is the guide on how to get each animation:
1) Planet. collect as little of the dust as possible try to right click a region with few large particles without attracting anything.
2) Protostar. attract for about at least 2 secs to collect some dust and right click.
How to win the Hydrogen fusing minigame: hold left click and fuse the ones which are close to each other first it might take a few tries but its not too hard once you got the hang of it.
3) Brown dwarf. Lose the hydrogen fusing minigame.
4) Sun -like star + Red giant win the hydrogen fusing minigame)
5) Planetary Nebula + Whitedwarf. If you didn't collect too much dust in the first round (just more than enough to not get a planet) then after the red giant phase you will become a Planetary Nebula then a White Dwarf
6) Supernova. if you collected a lot of dust in the first mini game ( collect for about 10-20 secs) then you get a Supernova after the red giant phase.
7) After the supernova phase you get a strong force minigame where you must keep the proton and neutron apart (use two hands on the space bar alternating to click faster is what I find is the best way to beat this minigame). win it and you get a neutron star, lose it and you get a black hole.
To run it you may need:
-Direct X9
-Latest version of the .NET Framework
-The XNA redistributable
Use this image if you need a clue to get some of the achievements.
http://www.astarmathsandphysics.com/a_level_physics_notes/cosmology/a_level_physics_notes_cosmology_template_html_42d1285.gif
If your not interested in the physics you may like the many pretty particle animations such as the ones for the Supernova or Black hole and they are to a certain degree physically accurate animations so you should hopefully learn something watching them too.
Good look collecting all of the achievements! (the supernova, planetary nebula and black hole are the nicest animations IMO so its worth trying to get to them.)
GUIDE(SPOILER):
--------------
A lot of people are missing some of the content so here is the guide on how to get each animation:
1) Planet. collect as little of the dust as possible try to right click a region with few large particles without attracting anything.
2) Protostar. attract for about at least 2 secs to collect some dust and right click.
How to win the Hydrogen fusing minigame: hold left click and fuse the ones which are close to each other first it might take a few tries but its not too hard once you got the hang of it.
3) Brown dwarf. Lose the hydrogen fusing minigame.
4) Sun -like star + Red giant win the hydrogen fusing minigame)
5) Planetary Nebula + Whitedwarf. If you didn't collect too much dust in the first round (just more than enough to not get a planet) then after the red giant phase you will become a Planetary Nebula then a White Dwarf
6) Supernova. if you collected a lot of dust in the first mini game ( collect for about 10-20 secs) then you get a Supernova after the red giant phase.
7) After the supernova phase you get a strong force minigame where you must keep the proton and neutron apart (use two hands on the space bar alternating to click faster is what I find is the best way to beat this minigame). win it and you get a neutron star, lose it and you get a black hole.
To run it you may need:
-Direct X9
-Latest version of the .NET Framework
-The XNA redistributable
Use this image if you need a clue to get some of the achievements.
http://www.astarmathsandphysics.com/a_level_physics_notes/cosmology/a_level_physics_notes_cosmology_template_html_42d1285.gif
| Windows | http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/ifa20/Stellar%20Evolution.zip |
| XNA redist (required) | http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27598 |
| Timelapse | http://youtu.be/-Q6xt0OH808 |
| Playthough Video | http://youtu.be/pt8s2o9NNWY |
| Source | http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/ifa20/Stellar%20Evolution%20Source.zip |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=15410 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 57% | 3 |
| Overall | 3.61 | 83 |
| Audio | 3.41 | 76 |
| Fun | 3.00 | 255 |
| Graphics | 3.93 | 71 |
| Humor | 1.94 | 418 |
| Innovation | 3.68 | 67 |
| Mood | 3.79 | 25 |
| Theme | 4.00 | 29 |
I wanted to add the ability to control the timing but it would have taken too long to implement as I would have needed to match it to the particle animations so I left it out :(.
1: the file becomes huge as XNA has a terrible content pipeline for SFX
2: My voice recording equipment sux (laptop microphone)
3: I have a cold so sounded horrible.
I wonder, can I make a black hole?
I really liked the graphics and the audio. Good work on that.
Also the game feels really nice and seems fun and interesting. Although I had no idea what was happening. It was educational though.
Also good work on the achievements.
ALso, where's community points gone? I'd have given you 5 stars on that for the timelapse and the playthrough video.
I imagine the text could be rather confusing to anyone who doesn't already know about the life cycle of a stars. Still, good revision tool :P
Asides from that, the graphics were excellent, the music was nice at first but too repetitive, and the user should really be allowed to skip text when they want.
And in a post-compo version, I'd suggest being able to rewind back to previous minigames instead of starting from scratch every time.