Planet Texas 2050
Resilience Sentry
The research station setting, called Resilience Sentry, is themed to the mission of Planet Texas 2050, and the game tasks players to race against an impending storm to escape the station and send critical data to the mainland.
MY part in creating resilience sentry
Construction Team Member
Construction Team Member
Construction Team Member
I was on the construction team for this project - which involved research, prototyping, and material selection using various tools such as a CNC, staple gun, miter saw, table saw, and router. Having little experience going into this project, I made sure to work closely with my more experienced team members to learn safe and efficient way
I was on the construction team for this project - which involved research, prototyping, and material selection using various tools such as a CNC, staple gun, miter saw, table saw, and router. Having little experience going into this project, I made sure to work closely with my more experienced team members to learn safe and efficient ways of building and installing walls, door frames, ceilings and floors. We battled conflicting schedules amongst team members and a strict project timeline, but in the end created a polished product that was safe and reliable!
I also led a lot of the logistical and creative efforts within my team to plan meetings, order parts and supplies, initiate conversations between us and other teams. Finally, I was the team designated "note-taker" and I recorded extensive notes of all meetings and play tests.
Game Guide
Construction Team Member
Construction Team Member
Given my prior experience as a game guide at The Escape Game company, I was eager to help teams have a great experience during our open house day at the end of the semester. As a game guide, I ran the controls and gave teams verbal clues via microphone, and also assisted with reset between games. Running games was definitely stressful at
Given my prior experience as a game guide at The Escape Game company, I was eager to help teams have a great experience during our open house day at the end of the semester. As a game guide, I ran the controls and gave teams verbal clues via microphone, and also assisted with reset between games. Running games was definitely stressful at times because we had to balance giving too many hints and giving players a good experience but we had consistently excellent feedback and had a good balance of wins and losses - important to any good escape room.
This role really helped me understand the puzzles in depth and problem solve quickly if an error occurred during the players' experience. Overall, I look forward to applying my construction, coordination and player experience skills I gained from this class to future projects.
Photo Gallery
As a class, we took the Clifton's Strength Assessment and evaluated our individual skills and our team skills based on our results. This picture on the projector shows the compiled results of our class's strengths. [Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
We started our construction process by painting all the 4'x8' sheets of plywood and MDF we would need. [Picture Credit to Laura Godinez.]
We then used a CNC router to cut the MDF and plywood sheets into ribs for our wall structure. [Picture Credit to Laura Godinez]
I learned how to operate the CNC and helped make many of the wall structures and door frames for this project. [Picture Credit to Laura Godinez.]
We also taped out our space in the Scenic Arts Studio so we could begin placing the walls up. [Picture Credit to Laura Godinez.]
Assembling a door frame from CNCed parts. [Picture Credit to Laura Godinez.]
A lot of the work took multiple people to help keep things steady. [Picture Credit to Laura Godinez.]
I helped put up the first few walls of our escape room! It was exciting seeing it evolve all the way from just a couple unpainted walls to a fully integrated experience
I helped a lot with the organization of our team via this kanban board. We used this to track everything we had left to complete for construction. [Picture Credit to J.E. Johnson.]
I also served as a liaison between the construction team and the other teams when collaboration was needed. I frequently took notes during project meetings to share with my team.
An aerial view of our escape room slowly coming together. [Picture Credit to J.E. Johnson.]
After a few weeks, our escape room transformed into something that felt more like a room once we installed the roof. [Picture credit to J.E. Johnson.]
One of the features I helped work on was installing and weighting a sliding door for the exit of our room.
Final image of the side of our room, complete with lighting and a projector [Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
Final image of the media screen and water systems area which created the immersive rain/storm effect for players during the game. [[Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
The entryway and first puzzle of our escape room. I helped order and install the plastic roofing to create a realistic shipping container look. [Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
The main control room in emergency lighting mode. I helped install, paint and patch the window wall as well as many other walls in the room. [Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
The server room with Puzzle 4. I worked with my team to CNC and sand the concrete wall effect out of a material called homasote. [[Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
The VR projection room with the beginning of Puzzle 6. [Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
The VR projection room with the main portion of Puzzle 6 - recalibrating the buoys to send information about the impeding storm. [Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
The main control room and view of the impending storm. [Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
Based on reviews, the players really seemed to enjoy interacting with elements of our room and loved how different elements came together to create a truly immersive environment. [Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
Overall, the room was a safe, fun and engaging experience for all players and I am so thankful to have been a part of something so unique. [Picture Credit to Logan Smith.]
A full list of everyone involved with Resilience Sentry. Picture on website is intentionally blurry for privacy, but it goes to show that the scale of this project is something that has never been done before at UT.
A portion of our class and crew smiling because our Escape Room open house event was a HUGE success! Thanks to everyone who made this experience possible - especially J.E., Chris, Karen, Sven, and any other instructors who guided us along the way.