Final Project: Student Choice
For your final project, you get to create anything that you would
like. You are free (and encouraged!) to come by my office to discuss
potential projects. Some ideas:
- Racing, with or without weapons
- Puzzle game (3D gameplay, or 2D gameplay with 3D models)
- Platformer (using 3D models, and either 2D or 3D gameplay)
- Space shooter (3D asteroids, simple space combat)
- Vehicular Combat
- Anything else you choos
I'm happy to discuss ideas with you, but you have plenty of freedom to
create what you think would be fun.
Design Document
Before you can create your game, you need to know
what you are
creating. The design document describes exactly what you game will
be. Your design document should contain:
- A description of the game and how it is played
- Mockups of gameplay screens (can be hand drawn). Pictures can be
worth 1000 words here -- a number of annotated screenshots can go
quite a distance to communicating exactly what you game is.
- A list of basic features that will definitely be in your game.
These are all of the features that will be in your game -- you will lose points if you promise what you cannot deliver
- A list of Stretch features / elements that you would like to get
into your game, but you may need to drop some (or all) of them to
finish you game by the deadline. Put some thought into these
features -- I'd like to see at least a few of them make it into
your final game
- A weekly schedule of deadlines. What you plan to accomplish each
week, with at least the first few weeks broken down by team member,
so that I can see what each team member is planning on doing.
The class after you turn in your initial design specification, I will
meet with each team dscuss changes you may need to make to your
specifications to have an acceptable product at the end of the
semester. I may encourage your to move some features from basic to
stretch, or I may require you to add more features to your basic set
of features if I don't think you are being sufficiently ambitious,
especially for your team size. You will be graded on how well your
final game meets your specifications, so your specification document
is important!
Weekly Schedule Updates
Your original design document needs to contain a weekly schedule of
what you plan on doing on a week-by-week basis for the remainder of
the semester. You are required to turn in
every week a
revised schedule which contains:
- What work has actually occured, on a week-by-week basis, since
the beginning of the project (much of this section will be the same
for each update, since you can't go back into the past and change
what you have already done
- Current state of the game. What exists, what works (and how
well)
- Schedule for the remainder of the semester. This will
likely change on a week-by-week basis, and may contain
design changes.
Since this is likely the first time you have designed and created your
own game, it is perfectly OK (and expected) that you do not hold
perfectly to the initial schedule, or even your exact initial
design. However, I will expect consistent work on the project
throughout the semester, and you should not expect to be able to
change your design in the last week of the class to match what you
actually got accomplished and expect a good grade.
Required Elements
While you have freedom to do what you would like for your final game, there
are some requirements that your game must have.
- Some sort of start screen / menu / etc. Don't immedieatly dump
the player into the action
- At least 2 different "levels", however that makes sense for your
game
- Ability to start a new game without quitting entirely out of the
application and starting again.
Other Project Feedback
As with project 2, you are strongly encouraged to play each other's
games. Give feedback, and get ideas for what you can do in your own
game. In adition to informal feedback you give to other teams, each
individual (not each team, but each individual) is requried to give
formal feedback to at least one team. This formal feedback will be
part of your grade for your project. Your formal feedback needs to
include:
- Best feature of the game, that should be emphasized and built
upon
- Any bugs found (with reproduction steps!)
- Suggested features to add / things to change
- Overall feedback -- how are the controls? The pacing? The
difficulty? Was it fun? Were there any "wow"
moments?
You will give the formal feedback to the other team, as well as turn
it in as part of your final project. To encourage you to give feedback
when it actually might do some good, you are reuqired to turn in your
formal feedback to both me and the other team one week before the
final deadline for this project.