Project SpaaaaaaaAaace is brought to you by Jamison O'Sullivan, Hannah Paquette, and Nathaniel Shortall!
Project SpaaaAaaaaaace is a 3D model of the solar system, with rotating planets and moons. Each orbit rotates at its own speed, and each planet is textured realistically to look like the actual planets of our solar system. One little thing we added in was the sun texture changing when the spaAaaacebar key is pressed. When the key is not being pressed, a texture of the sun is displayed, but when the spaaaAaacebar key is pressed, the sun texture is replaced with a picture of the one and only Mark Sherman.
There were a few things we were unable to accomplish with this model that we originally planned on doing. The first were the stars. The dream was to have a background that would slowly draw stars randomly across the canvas as the program ran. When that became too hard to figure out on top of the rest of the project, we instead decided to just have stars pre-drawn somehow. Eventually, even that became too much. At one point we also tried to add the "Space Man" video Mark sent to Jamie (which stated that if we could make it our background, we'd get a 100 on the project) but we couldn't figure out how to add a video to a plane in the background, so we gave up. We settled on a plain black background. A second thing we'd wished to accomplish was assigning each student in the programming class to a planet, and putting a photo of them onto each, so when spaAaaAaacebar was pressed the entire solar system would be replaced by nine students revolving around Mark at various speeds, which we thought was fitting. We did not, however have access to photos of every student, and thought it may be weird to ask everyone for a photo to put into the code. So instead, only the sun's (Mark) image changes.
Everything else we had planned, though, was easy enough to accomplish when delegated properly. Our group met often to work on the code and communicated near-constantly through Github updates and a group text. Hannah was the one to complete the base of the project, the skeleton of the rotating system, while Jamie focused on design work as well as fine-tuning, adapting, editing, and annoying Mark at all hours of the night (including taking on the full task of making the sun into Mark). Nathaniel, though less present in the physical coding of the project, kept us all organized and on-task, and had a seemingly endless stream of ideas on what to do and how to accomplish it, referencing past projects or just putting a new spin on an idea in a way that would eventually lead to various breakthroughs in our design. Though he might not have been the one typing, his thoughts are present within this model. Without his ideas, we'd surely still be stuck somewhere with a singular rotating planet, trying to figure out how to make the system through an array of objects. With Hannah focusing on structure, Jamie focusing on design, and Nathaniel keeping all of our million ideas in check, we were able to form a healthy group environment to complete the project with ample time. Though there were times that felt like we'd gotten in over our heads and wouldn't be able to finish the idea like we wanted it, we were not only able to pull it off quite easily but to comprehend each piece of code and how it all came together to form something as complex as our model.
We hope you enjoy Project SpaaAaaAaaAaace as much as we do!