Wow! We made it to the end. This week people will wrap up projects. Instructions for final project handins and post-mortems are here.

• Tuesday, December 11 – Last Lecture! There will be a lecture. I’ll talk about some stuff like animation. Don’t forget to send your playtest feedback to the TA before class!
• Thursday, December 13 – No required class. I will go to the lecture room at class time in case someone wants to come by to talk about something (if you have questions about technical topics, the games industry, or whatever). It’s optional – feel free to use the time to work on your project, study for your other exams, or anything else.
• Friday, December 14th – Festival of Games! We’ll meet in 1358 (the lab) at 2:30 and play the final versions of the games! Show off how things turned out! Experience the cool things your classmates built! Make sure your game is handed in before the lab session starts.
• Friday, December 14th / Monday December 17th – Your final project handins are due. This includes a group post-mortem, as well as a personal reflection. We really need to get everything before noon on Monday, December 17th so we can get our grades done.

We’ve gotten into the home stretch here – just 2 weeks left to wrap up projects, and any topics we’re going to talk about. There won’t be any readings or assignments, so you can stay focused on your projects.

The big thing this week is the playtest on Friday, December 7th. As we’ve mentioned in class, this will be logistically complex. Remember to send your availability between 1:30 and 4pm to Mark (the TA) so he can schedule things. More details about how the playtests will be given in class.

• Tuesday, December 4 – We’ll talk about some more graphics tricks (shadow volumes, ambient occlusion, …), and start talking about AI.
• Thursday, December 6 – We will talk about the procedure for the playtests. We’ll talk about some other technical topics (probably AI).
• Friday, December 7 – Play test. There will be a set schedule where in scheduled 15 minute blocks you’ll be either observing someone playing your game, or playing someone else’s. You will be required to write about what you see (brief comments on the other games, and what you’ve learned about your games).

I should also note, that since we don’t have assignments and readings, the only way for you to learn what we’re talking about is by having you come to class. So for this phase of class, we’ll just have to assume that if you don’t come to class, you’re not learning the material, and the converse (if you come, you’ve learned the material – which admittedly is a crude approximation).

We’ve made it through Thanksgiving, and are now ready for that final push towards the final project! We’ll use class times for lectures (usually), but we’ll cut back on readings and assignments so you can stay focused on projects.

• Tuesday, November 27 – Lecture on Graphics. We’ll talk about lighting and shading and other graphics topics.
• Tuesday, November 29 – more discussion on Graphics. Topics depend on how much we get through on Tuesday.
• Friday, November 30 – project milestone (playable demo). This is the last major milestone before the play test (which is December 7th). Your group needs to show a playable prototype. Not all the elements need to be put together (you can have independent examples of the different technologies, you might not have levels or progression or …) – but there should be something that looks and feels like a game. The exact mechanism for us to check on this is TBD

Next week, we’ll have some tech topic lectures (probably animation and/or AI), but mainly it will be getting ready for the playtest.

There is a reading assignment (with associated forum posting) due on Tuesday, November 20th. Assignment 8 is posted in the Assignments category. Briefly, you need to read 2 (preferably 3) chapters of a book provided in the protected course reader (Ch1, Ch2, Ch3), and comment on it in the forum.

This week, we’ll really get Project 3 underway. Now that you have a plan, I think everyone realizes what it is going to take to get to that all important first milestone. This week, we’ll have few other demands on you other than to focus on the project. (Note: this won’t be a recurring theme – there will be more readings!). And we still owe everyone feedback on P2.

• Tuesday, November 13 – We’ll have a lecture on some technical topics. I have a list of things I feel compelled to teach you about, and I’ll pick a subset.
• Thursday, November 15h – We’ll have a guest lecture on sound design – Prof. Joe Koykkar. This should be really useful to get you to think about how to get sound into your games.
• Friday, November 16th – Signs of life demos. We’ll have a lab session, mainly as a time for you to work with your groups. Mark and I will both check-in with each group to make sure you’re making good progress towards those first goals, and that your communication processes are in place.

The following week, we’ll have a lecture (and a reading assignment) about HCI. And Thanksgiving.

Yes, P2 grades are still delayed. But I thought I should explain what you will get, which might also give you an idea why it takes so long.

Both Mark and I evaluated your games based on your demo, and playing them a little more afterwards. We tried to evaluate the game itself, without considering the “backstory” of how it was made. As much as possible we tried looking at post-mortems until after we were done with this. This grade is meant to be about how good is this game (in terms of the assignment goals), not necessarily how much we liked it (although, the two are highly correlated). After independently doing this, we traded answers (you should get both). In the event our assessments were different, we re-evaluated. The grade with my assessment is what counts, but it considers Marks comments.

Note that this grade does not correct for “other factors” that we may be aware of – its just based on playing the game. Also, in some cases, we give you a range of grades, or a notation that its closer one way than the other for when we have to determine final grades.

Then I read all of the post-mortems. First, I “graded” the post-mortems independent of what they said. If you put energy into a thoughtful, reflective assessment of what happened, it doesn’t matter if what happened was good or not. That said, it’s actually easier to draw lessons from failures rather than successes, so if things were successful, the expectations are a little lower. Here, things are graded “poor, cursory, ok, good, reflective” – where the categories are all +/- 1.

I wrote a sentence or two of feedback. However, this is really terse and in many cases cursory. The problem is that in the interesting cases, it is difficult for me to make meaningful comments without giving away some of the things your partners said. One of the things that is fascinating (and challenging) about this process is that we often get 3 very different stories – trying to reconcile them is an interesting puzzle. In some cases, I can figure out what I think happened.

One of the things that helps in figuring out what happened is to look across the 3 projects. This is part of the reason why I reserve judging some of the “extra factors” that come out in the post-mortems until the end. From a single project, it might not be obvious how different people contribute from the different accounts, but with a semester’s worth of data, we can actually figure out a lot.

Some process advice:

Getting the group to work together is the most important thing. Those factors should influence what you choose.

• Skills inventory
• Goals inventory
• Time inventory
• scheduling will be a challenge! make sure you can find at least 1-2 times per week to meet!
• Look over the planning document requirements – this is meant to force you to consider some of the important issues

consider what kinds of games you might want to make (given those things above)

then look over the list of potential ideas (you have 10 to choose from!)

This week is mainly about getting Project 3 rolling. Hopefully, everyone is already thinking about the different potential games, and providing feedback on each of the proposals (in the forum).

OK, I can tell that at the time of writing, there has been almost no discussion. Remember that part of the assignment is to comment on other proposals.

Over the next days (Thursday 11/1-Tuesday 11/6) , there will be discussion (online in the forums) about the proposals. Each person must comment on at least half of the other games, and each team is responsible for responding to comments about their game. The idea is to have some dialog and discussion so that people can decide which games to build. Your discussion counts towards your class participation grade.

You should be commenting on other proposals, and possibly commenting on the comments on your own proposal. You should do this before class Tuesday, so that your feedback is available as teams try to decide whether to pick these projects or not.

The exact content for the lecture times is not yet set (as of Sunday) – our plan is to allow lots of time for teams to meet to discuss the project, but also to give you some information on how to run a project like this. (At least part of one lecture will be David Gagnon talking about small game development process). There is a first project milestone on Friday (the game plans), and we want each team to be ready for it.

So this week…

• Tuesday, November 6 – it’s election day – make sure you vote. The proposal critiques are due (preferably much earlier than class, so that people can look at them). In class, we’ll announce teams, discuss development process, and give you some time to meet with your team.
• Thursday, November 8 – this class will include some more discussion on software engineering and development process, but mainly provide time for teams to work together to start on their plans, which are due the next day. In class, we’ll have a signup sheet for times to meet to discuss the plans.
• Friday, November 9 – Game plans are due. You need to turn in your plan in the morning so that we can read it before the planning meetings. In lab time, the professor and TA will meet with each group to discuss the plan. There will be a signup sheet where each of the 5 teams will pick a 15 minute slot. Ideally, all of the team would come – but we understand that this might be impossible. Please have as much of the team come as possible.

The following, project 3 will be in full force. We’ll also return to technical and artistic topics. We’ll probably have a guest lecture on sound.

This coming week in 679 we’ll switch from project 2 to project 3.

• Tuesday, October 30 – In lecture, we’ll talk about some aspects of game programming. Your project 2 post-mortem is due.
• Thursday, November 1 – In class time, we’ll have project pitches. Each design pair will give a 3-5 minute pitch for their design. Make sure that you send your materials to Mark before class time, and that you have your proposal online (preferably by Wednesday, October 31st)
• Friday, November 2 – No lab session. However, we hope that everyone will be using the Forum to discuss the various proposed project designs.

On Tuesday, November 6, we’ll announce the project teams, you can begin to think about planning your project, and we’ll have a class discussion about game building process.

This assignment is really part of Project 2, but since it is done individually (rather than with your partner) we will call it an assignment. It is due before class on Tuesday, October 30. The reason for this deadline is that you’ll be starting project 3, and we want to have project 2 out of the way! Send your assignment to both the TA and Professor by e-mail.

After doing a big project, an important aspect of learning about it is to reflect on what you have just done.

1. How happy are you with the game you produced?
2. If you had another week, how might your game have been better?
3. Describe your design/development process. What went right/wrong? How did you divide up the tasks?
4. How well did your group work together? This is a chance to give kudos (or complaints) about your partner. Your group gets the same grade for the game.
5. What might we not appreciate about your game, if we grade it simply by playing it and looking at the code? (especially since we might not be good at playing it)
6. What shaders did you write? Describe them and what they do, as well as how they fit into the game. (by “you” here, we mean “you” individually, since each person was supposed to write at least 1 shader)
7. What feedback did you get at the final demos? What might you do about it?

Note: it is much better to be honest than delusional. If you simply say “our game was great” (without much thought as to why), its not as good as giving a thorough critique (even if negative). We’re looking for the depth in your thought. We’ll judge your game ourselves (modulo #5), and are probably more realistic in our expectations than you are.