GameFinal

What happens after the playtesting?

Briefly:

1. You send your playtest reports (for the other games you've played) to the TA on Wednesday. Details of this are on the Main.Playtesting page.
2. You turn in a final game on Friday, you can optionally plan an extra demo
3. You turn in the group documentation on Friday
4. You turn in the per-person documentation soon after Friday
5. You turn in the anonymous parts after break

Note: this document supersedes what was discussed in the Milestones document. If the two disagree, trust this one.

The details...

Handing stuff in

We will make a "pub" directory for each group to faciliating putting pieces of things on the web.

Each group should have a "main" page that has links to all of the group documents. Both the final ones, as well as the original plan, the original design document, etc.

If you don't want to do all of the final writeups as Wiki pages, that's OK - just make sure they are linked to the Wiki. You an put Acrobat, Powerpoint, Word, or whatever into the pub directory and make links for it.

You actual game (the executable binary) should be turned in as a ZIP file that contains everything needed to run the game. Put the ZIP file in the pub directory and make sure its linked to the "main" project page. Someone should be able to download the ZIP file, unpack it, and play. The Professor and TA will need to do this to test your final game.

If you do not want the world to be able to download and play your game, we can set it up so that either only people in the class, or even just the TA/Professor has access to it.

The final project

We will look at your final game. Especially if its improved over your playtest version. (selfishly, all of the games sound fun, so we want to try them!). You will notice below that part of your final writeup is to talk about how the final game is different than the playtest.

Note: if you want to turn in a post-final game after the deadline, that's OK too (provided you turned in a final one at the deadline). We won't guarantee that it will sway your grade, but by this point, you might want to make things really great out of pride.

On your main page, you should also include instructions for building your game from the source. If things are in CVS, explain how to check it out. If parts aren't in CVS you should include them in a ZIP file (and give a link to it). We will look at your code.

The group final writeup

In addition to the main page (which just needs to be a bunch of links), your group must turn in:

1. any documentation for playing the game (this should also be in the ZIP packet for playing the game)
2. a "marketing" document
3. a technical summary
4. a playtest document

All of these are due at 5pm on Friday, March 30th. We'll be lenient on this deadline, however, we expect that it will be easier to get your group together to complete it before break.

The last three deserve explanation:

The Marketing Document

Make a Wiki page (or powerpoint presentation, or ...) that describes the game as it appears to the player. This is the place to both describe the game, but also to "sell" how great it is. Include screen grabs that show off the coolest features (or even video grabs).

During play testing (or even later evaluation), we might not get to see the coolest parts of your game. This document is where you get to really show off.

The Technical Summary

Tell us what's going on inside. What cool algorithms and methods did you use. What tools did you use? How is the code organized? Anything particularly interesting about how you built the game? Anything clever in how you organized things so that your team could work together? Anything you are particularly proud of?

We will look at your source code, and look through the other non-code components, but we can't really look too closely. So this document is your chance to tell us why what you did was interesting technically.

The playtest document

This document describes the result of the playtest. You can also use it as an opportunity to talk about what you've learned from playing the game yourself, but try to indicate what came from the tests.

Three specific things that should be in this document:

1. What changes did you actually make based on the playtest? (this is important so we know what to look for in the final game). Admittedly, we don't expect you to have done too much in the 2 days.
2. What changes would you like to have made based on what you learned from testing?
3. If you had more time to work on the game, what would you do?

2 and 3 are similar - they both ask what you'd do with more time. But we are curious as to what things were influenced by testing, and what things you just want to do in general.

The per-person post-mortem

Each person must write a project "post-mortem". If you've ever seen Game Developer magazine, you've seen these. Here its a little bit different.

Technically, this is due at 5pm on March 30th (I can't make something due during break). But we won't look at anything until April 4th, and probably won't penalize things that arrive before April 9th.

You can send the whole thing by email to both the instructor and the TA. Parts of it are private, and must be sent this way. Other parts you might want to share, so its OK to put the public part on the Wiki, and the private parts in email (just be sure to put a link to the Wiki in the email). Having a public part is optional.

Your post-mortem should include:

1. Your own assessment of your game. Do you like it?
2. A list of what you think went right, and what you think went wrong. This should consider both the process, and the final product.
3. A list of what you would have done again, and what you would have done differently.
4. Any advice you'd have for future students.
5. A discussion of what you learned from this whole adventure. (note: there will be an opportunity to critique the project in the anonymous part below)
6. An evaluation of each team member's contribution (including your own), and of the overall group dynamics.

The anonymous post-mortem

We want to know what you thought of this adventure. But we've learned you won't tell us unless its anonymous. We'll give you a questionnaire (short, I promise), and ask you to fill it out, put it into an envelope, put your name on the envelope (so we can make sure we've gotten it from you), and give it to us. We'll check off who handed it in, then open the envelopes, shuffle things (so its anonymous), and only look at this after grades are assigned.

We will have the questionnaire available on March 29th.

This will not be due until Tuesday, April 10th - you can bring it to class.