So I've begun developing the level layout as well as several features to the game. Megan made several capsule models that we're gonna keep updating and Patrick has given me a wrench. There have been several components that have been lifesavers so far, especially the FixedJoint component. I made several different scripts to get at this point, each of which is very simple at under 100 lines, which is something I'm very happy about. The point of this is to let the physics engine do as much work as possible. Click the link below to see the current build. I'll be making future posts to break down what's new in it and to describe how I did it.

Play Here

Controls:
WASD - Directional Movement
X - Down
SPACE - Up
Q - Brake
CLICK - Interact
G - Drop wrench
RIGHT CLICK - Use wrench (after you've grabbed it)

So for the character controller I had a few ideas. It's an astronaut floating through space. So realistically it will be a completely difficult to move around. I don't want that. I want realistic enough to appear believable, yet still controllable. But then again, I don't actually want it that controllable. I want it a little difficult to move around in. Just for the fact that getting to the other end of the space station should be difficult. It should be hard, it should take some time, and at the end of it the player should be rewarded. Taking the time to navigate to the end of the space station should be that thing for that ambitious player, that player that goes and explores places that they hope the sneaky developer put some hidden little stash in. Well I wanna make that stash and I wanna reward that player.

So I designed this character controller. It's very simple. I imagine the player controlling a space suit with some sort of compressed air propulsion. so I will have a 3D compass rose of propulsion, along with simple mouse look characteristics similar to an FPS. So knowing how I wanted this to act, and knowing that I want every object to be based on physics, I based the movement completely on the Rigidbody. I have a rigidbody attached to the character that my character control script references. And after some tweaking and experimenting I actually had my entire movement scripting complete. There's actually only one line that controls movement and that's "rigidbody.AddRelativeForce" I have a line of this attributed to every direction, attached to a standard keyboard movement setup. After a little bit of scripting I had the controls below. 
PlayHere
WASD - Movement
SPACE - Up
X - Down
Mouse - Look

With the setting and inspiration of the game down now we just had to make it a game. Inspired by roguelikes I'd been playing lately I wanted to do something that had lots of quick replayability. I wanted it to be a quickly beaten game that has multiple ways of beating it, and where every play-through is different. So we immediately decided on a few things, the most important of which is the goal:


Get back inside the space station you've been locked out of.
The game opens up with a black screen and your character saying "Ooooh shit." The camera fades from black to a starry background, a space station in front of you, and a piece of paper floating away from your outstretched hand. The piece of paper has a 4 digit code written on it, which is the code to get back inside the space station you're now locked out of. So now you have to try and find a way to get back inside the station. We've already come up with a few ways that you can get back in:

• Knock on the door.
• Catch the code.
• Hammer out a window.
• Knock on a window.
• Disconnect a capsule and go through that door.
• Vent the station.
• Crawl in through waste disposal.
• Wait 6 hours for the crew to come looking for you.

The ways to get in vary from simple to complicated and can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour (or 6 hours if you want to go AFK). We want them to be interesting enough that the player wants to play through over and over again to find new ways in. The challenge will come from discovering the various methods to get in, and fighting physics to navigate around.

So at 2AM one night my girlfriend and I had an idea. I can't tell you exactly where it came from, but the seed of it was "Wouldn't it be hilarious to see an astronaut that was really really really bad at doing simple things? What if he forgot simple passwords, couldn't remember his home address, or locked himself out of his house?" That train of thought got us laughing, but it got funnier the more specific we got. "What if he locked himself out of the space-station?" Or even better: "What if he locked himself out of the space station because he forgot a 4-digit code to get back in?" For whatever reason that struck a cord with us and we laughed at the image of a piece of paper, with 4 numbers on it, floating away from a man desperately trying to move in zero-G. So we took that, and decided to make it into a game. 
Incompetent Astronaut