Project Deliverables


Team Formation
 Concept Document
 Schedule and Individual Milestones
 Technical Design Doc
 Working Prototype
 Progress Report
 Final Submission

Due Dates

Concept Document - February 5, Friday at 5 PM

Team Formation

The goal of this assignment is for you to form a team of exactly two members that will develop your game term project.

Since it helps for a team to have an identity, each team must have a name.

A common source of problems with student teams is lack of communication. To help address this, each team member needs to provide at least two means of communication (such as a cell phone number, or an email address). Another common team coordination problem is not having a common meeting time. To address this, each team must identify two times during the week when it is possible and acceptable for the team to meet for at least one hour.

Template

When submitting your list of team names and members, please include all of the following information:

  • Name of the team
  • Name of each team member
  • Two pieces of contact information for each team member, such as an email address or a cell phone number.
  • Two times during the week when the team can meet for at least one hour.
  • A location that can be used for meetings
This information must be submitted, typewritten, on a piece of paper. After submission of this assignment, each team member will be expected to know this information, so you should take this opportunity to add phone numbers to cell phones, email addresses to email applications, etc.


Concept Document

The goal of this assignment is to write a compelling document that describes and sells your video game concept. The very first stage of development of a new video game involves a development team pitching a game concept to a publisher. If the publisher is interested in the game concept, they will invite a more detailed game proposal, which is then used in deciding whether to fund development of the game.

As a result, the game concept document must concisely describe the idea for your game, doing so in a way that makes it clear what is compelling about the gameplay of the game, and giving a sense of the graphic elements of the game.

We expect artwork used in your game projects t
o be original material, or material that is licensed for general non-commercial use. You may not use copyrighted material. If you use non-original artwork, you may be asked to provide documentation concerning its license terms. In the past, even teams who did not have strong artistic skills were still able to create effective graphics for their game. For example, one team created a space shooter using hand-sketched ships flying over lined paper.

You may get help from people outside of your team, such as friends, or members of other class teams, in creating the artwork for your game. That is, it is not considered cheating to get assistance in creating your game's artwork. We consider the graphic design of your game to be an integral part of the game design, and hence if you do get outside help, you should make sure you maintain some degree of artistic control, so the artwork produced meets the needs of your game in setting its tone, visual feel, etc.

This is a group assignment, and we expect one game concept document for the entire team.

For your game concept document, you must turn in the following items:

  • Title page, including:
    • Title of your game
    • Name of your group
    • Name of each member of your group
  • One or more images from the game such as a character, scene, or artifact (car, gizmo). the goal of this image is to provide an initial impression of the visual qualities of the game.
  • An overview page, that states the name of the game, and then is logically divided into three sections:
    • A table at the top of the page that describes the game genre, platform, and team size.
    • A "key points" section in the middle that contains a bulleted list of important aspects of the gameplay. The goal of this section is to give the reader, in a very condensed form, a high level understanding of the goal of the game, the main characters, the main fictional elements, the significant scenes in the game, the flow of the game, what makes the game unique, and the primary actions the player takes. Example bulleted list items include (but are not limited to):
      • "An educational game that teaches algebra, calculus, and differential equations!"
      • "MegaFido, the biggest, meanest cyber-dog in the ultrapound chases tetra-cats and zypher-squirrels using his super smell and razor-sharp canines."
      • "The player runs around collecting acorns, banana slugs, and bay leaves which they exchange for scantron sheets, allowing them to progress past the exam puzzles."
      • "Multiple levels provide increasingly rich gameplay as the number of mutant starfish grows, and the slippery spiny lobsters get faster, and more canny."
      • "You'll have players running for their umbrellas as more and more objects drop from the sky."
      • "8 levels span multiple distinct regions of the campus, as the player clears the giant banana slugs from forest, meadow, library, classroom and dining hall."
      • "The adventure takes the player on a madcap trip through the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, and Zion National Park!"
    • An image, similar to that on the cover, that conveys the visual feel of the game, or displays one or more scenes from the game. The image should generate excitement, and convey the energy of playing this game.
  • A page that gives true pocket (brief) biographies of all team members (1-2 paragraphs per team member). These biographies should stress experiences that make you a strong game designer. Why should the publisher trust your team to develop a new, innovative game?
  • 1-3 pages giving, in textual form, a description of your game. This should include:
  • The fictional background of your game (what is the background story? Are you saving the princess, or saving the world?) This includes a brief description of major characters in your game.
    • What is the goal of the player of the game (how does the player win?)
    • What are the key challenges presented to the player?
    • How does the player interact with the game?
    • How does the player advance the fictional aspects of the game (if possible)? For example, how do they save the princess, or save the world?
    • If the game has levels, a brief description of each of the levels.
    • If the game is an educational game, describe how it meets its educational goal.
    • If the game is designed for a specific audience (young kids, middle school girls, absent-minded professors), describe how the game has been specifically designed for this audience.
  • 1-2 pages giving sample artwork from the game. This artwork can be in rough (sketch) form, and does not have to be production quality. This can include:
    • Sketches of characters
    • Sketches of levels
    • Sketches of key game interactions (a player performing a specific game activity)
Note that we expect all artwork used in the game to be either original, or have license terms that permit non-commercial use. See the project description page for more information.

Evaluation Criteria

Grades for the game project concept document will depend primarily on whether all required document elements are present, and whether the game concept document provides a sufficiently detailed description of the game that the game concept can be understood by someone outside your team.

Specifically, grades will follow these guidelines:

  • Title page: is it present, and does it have required elements, including game graphic? (5%)
  • Overview page: is it present, and does it have required elements (described in the template), including the game genre, platform, team size, key points, and game image? (15%)
  • Team pocket biographies: is there a brief biography for each team member? Does the biography explain why this team member is a good choice for creating this game? (15%)
  • Overview of the game: does the document have a 1-3 page description of the game? Does this overview address the points discussed in the template? (45%)
  • Sample artwork from the game: is it present. Does the artwork help illustrate the characters or levels in the game? If the game is using third-party artwork, is it attributed and cleared for noncommercial use? (20%)

Technical Design Document and Work Breakdown

The purpose of this document is to describe the internal structure of your code at the class level. This is accomplished by creating one or more UML structure diagrams to represent the static structure of the code. These diagrams represent the detailed technical design of your project.

A major goal of the assignment is the application of software design patterns in the context of a non-trivial software design activity. As a result, your design must use design patterns where appropriate. While the assignment encourages the use of software design patterns, and expects their use, gratuitous use of patterns where they are not appropriate is strongly discouraged. A good designer knows when to use software design patterns, and also when not to use them. You need to indicate on your UML diagram when you are using specific software design patterns.

A complete technical design document will contain a static structural description, detailed below.

Static structural description. In one or more UML structure diagrams, represent all of the classes and interfaces that your team will develop in your project. Where you create subclasses of existing XNA framework classes, you should also indicate these classes as well on the UML diagram, though not to the same level of detail. Each class should describe the class variables, and all of the methods in the class. Ideally you will also provide method parameter lists, though this is not strictly necessary. Diagrams should represent all inheritance and containment relationships among classes. The structure diagram typically needs to describe the following game elements:

input handling
representation of game levels, if present
player class
enemy classes, including a container holding active enemies
game object classes, including a container to hold them
collision detection
classes for drawing player, enemies, other game objects
classes for handling audio
menu system classes
Your game may also include other elements above and beyond this list.

When developing your UML structure diagram, you should consider the most important code sequences in your game, as these will lead you to flesh out the details of your design. These sequences should include at least the following:
Initialization. What happens when the game first starts running? This involves creating player and opponent objects, loading levels, playing background music, displaying an initial menu, etc.
Menu system. IF the game has a series of menus, what is the sequence of selecting one menu item?
Main game loop. What methods are called, in which order, during each clock tick of the game during normal operation? Typical operations include gathering input, updating state, collision detection, checking for end-of-level conditions, drawing objects, and updating particle systems.
Player collision. What happens when the player has a collision, such as with a wall, a bullet, an enemy, or other? This involves updating object state, visually representing the collision, and often playing some kind of sound.
Enemy collision. What happens when the enemy has a collision?
Scoring. How is the game score changed?
AI. What are the different possible behaviors of opponents?
End of level. What happens in the game when there is a transition to a new level?
Common pitfalls. Common errors include not including audio handling, and inconsistency between the game design document and the technical design document. Every aspect of the game described in the game design document should be present in the technical design document as well.

Description

To aid our understanding of your UML structure diagrams, you must also provide a brief, 1-2 page description of your design. Provide a brief 1-2 sentence textual description of the responsibility of each class in your design. Please also briefly describe any unusual (i.e., beyond getter and setter property) collaborations among classes. This should not be a long document.

Template

For your technical design document, you must turn in the following items. For more detail on the exact content required in each of the diagram types, see the technical design document description.

Title page, including:
Title of your game
Name of your group
Name of each member of your group
One or more pages providing a printout of the UML structure diagram for your design. The UML structure diagram should describe which design patterns are used in the design. A UML editing tool, such as StarUML simplifies editing of UML structure diagrams.
Work breakdown into tasks with each team member's individual tasks clearly specified and dependencies identified -- This will get you additional points for the schedule and milestones document specified in the grading scheme.

You must also submit your brief, 1-2 page document describing the design.

Assessment of the technical design document will focus on completeness of the UML structure diagram (90%), and whether the design description document was submitted (10%). Work breakdown and individual milestones will be an additional grade of 3% for the project

UML Structure Diagram.

Format. Does the diagram follow UML formatting conventions for classes, class variables, methods, inheritance arcs, and containment arcs?
Completeness. How complete is the diagram? Do all classes list their methods and class variables? Are all classes that will be in the final game described? Does the diagram describe audio, input handling, collision detection, updating, and drawing?
Inter-class relationships. Does the document have the appropriate arcs for inheritance and containment relationships among classes?
Consistency. Are all of the classes in the diagram consistent with the classes and methods used in the UML sequence diagrams?
Connections to frameworks. Does the diagram clearly show where your classes connect (inherent) from framework classes, such as XNA classes?



<<< Back to Class Home Page