You wake up on a spaceship drifting in space. What is the purpose of your mission? How do you move in zero gravity? These are the challenges you will have to face if you enter the virtual world of Weightless - a game invented by WUST students.

Marta Rutkowska and the brothers Wiktor and Fryderyk Rott are studying at the Faculty of Computer Science and Management. Together they took part in the competition for the best engineering project, which they worked on for the whole semester in the third year of their computer science degree programme. Their project won the greatest recognition of the jury - representatives of companies including Volvo, Capgemini, Credit Suisse, InsERT, and Dolby Poland, as well as the Academy of Fine Arts.

The game, whose plot is set in space, was designed and produced by the team on its own using the VR technology. - We decided we’d go for virtual reality because this market has great potential, is developing dynamically and is not dominated by the monopolists known for their high budget games. We're players ourselves, so we know what's popular now - says Wiktor Rott.

It was important for them to learn something new and gain experience when developing their engineering project.

All alone on an abandoned ship

- We set the plot of our game in space, which gives you an opportunity to apply various technical solutions. What we have here is, above all, a high level of immersion, i.e. the user's involvement in the virtual reality experience - explains the student and adds that the very subject of space is extremely interesting for an ordinary person. - I suspect that rather few of us will have the opportunity to go on a real galactic journey - adds Wiktor. Their game gives the player the opportunity to feel like a passenger of a ship drifting in uncharted space.

The plot is set in the near future. The residents of the planet Earth are colonising other planets. It is done with a fleet of single capsule ships, not just one huge space shuttle with a big crew. In case of any failure, the mission has a chance to be continued by the remaining capsules.

- The player wakes up on one of those one-man ships that has gone off course. As an emergency, they have been woken up from the hibernation into which the expedition participants are introduced beforehand to better endure the length of the space flight and the solitude it involves. The player’s task is to restore power in the drifting ship and direct it to the right course. You need to find out what the purpose of your mission is and what really happened in the first place - says Marta Rutkowska.  - The problem is that you have amnesia. Your only help is the diaries, which you probably created yourself before the accident - she adds.

How to grab objects?

The use of VR technology and zero weight were big challenges for the programmers. - It was our dad, a big fan of the science fiction genre, who gave us the idea to tackle zero gravity - say Wiktor and Fryderyk.

It turned out that in virtual reality the issue of graphics requires a different approach than in traditional games. - I had to learn to design 3D graphics - says Fryderyk Rott, who was the team member responsible for the visual part of the project. - We checked on our own how the mechanics of lifting and moving objects, or manipulating light sources work in such a space. And on top of that, there’s no gravity, so grabbing objects is slightly different - adds Fryderyk, who plans to become a conceptual artist in the computer gaming industry.

He is convinced that the combination of programming education and artistic talent are a great basis for development in this direction. - Thanks to my IT knowledge, in my work on Weightless, I immediately knew which ideas were feasible and which would be too burdensome for the whole mechanism - he says. He explains that the design process is most effective if you can follow a kind of model.  - The more knowledge you have about the environment being designed, the better the results. Fortunately, I’ve been fascinated with the subject of space and sci-fi since childhood, and that’s been very useful to me," says Fryderyk. 

A game for everybody

Students emphasize that they wanted every element of the game to be refined and to reflect the feel of space in the best possible way while being player-friendly. They wanted Weightless to attract both seasoned players who know how to navigate in the world of VR and newcomers for whom this game will be the first encounter with virtual reality. - We’ve prepared a little tutorial so that the player doesn't lose their energy trying to guess which button is used for what. We've also introduced graphical facilitations helping the player to move around in this space - explains Wiktor.

The makers of the game admit that as far as programming is concerned they didn't come across too many difficulties, because they’d already had some experience programming things such as game engines. Marta and Wiktor have been working for some time for game design companies. However, they agree that the greatest fun for them was to see the deck of a spaceship in VR from the position of the person inside it. At earlier stages of work on the game, they had the opportunity to see their project only from the third-person perspective.

They are improving the prototype

According to the WUST students, Weightless is now only a prototype of the game, one still in need of some improvements. Then they plan to make it commercially available. - We want our game to be available on various VR platforms. We consulted about the project with other players at various stages of development - says Marta Rutkowska. - Our friends also acted as testers. Sometimes it was funny because we would ask someone to put on VR glasses and make a certain move with their hand and then tell us if they’d felt OK about performing that activity. And that's it. We asked for help both those who deal with virtual reality a lot, but also those who had no experience of it. Those were valuable tips for us - says the student.

In all this, Marta and Wiktor still found some time for a hobby, which is street workout. - It’s pulling yourself up on rods, various push-ups and exercises using your body weight - explains Marta. As for Fryderyk, apart from his studies, he has been practising drawing and painting techniques. I learned about concept art in the TK Games scientific circle at the University and I got completely hooked - he adds laughing.

The students believe that their university courses gave them not only the basics of IT, but also an opportunity to meet a lot of people with different interests as well as exchange experiences and views, and find inspiration.

- So far, Weightless has been our biggest project. We hope that soon other players will be able to see the outcome of our work - concludes Marta Rutkowska.