GameMilestones

Milestones / deadlines for the Game Project

Task	Due	% of grade
Pick Partner for Game Design	Feb 19	0%
Ideas Email	Feb 23	0%
Game Design Writeup	Feb 26	5%
Feedback on Game Designs	Feb 27/28	5%
Groups Assigned	Mar 1	0%
Game Project Proposals	Mar 6	10%
Game Project Plan	Mar 13	10%
Game Project Progess	Mar 20	5%
Game Project Playtest Demo	Mar 27	20%
Game Reviews	Mar 29	5%
Game Project Final Documents and Eval	Mar 30	25%
Playtesting Summary and Post-Mortem	Mar 30	5%
Other random grading factors		10%

Description of these Milestones

Note: more details will be posted elsewhere where the projects are listed.

Pick Partner for Game Design (due Feb 18)

If you do not pick a partner by noon on Feb 19th (by email to the instructor and TA) we will assign you one.

We will email final assignments to everyone before class on Tuesday the 20th. If you don't get the email before noon, something has gone wrong.

Note: you must pick a partner other than your programming assignment partner. Also, the partners will be assigned to different project groups.

Why split designers? I want to make sure that for every design that gets built, there is a designer who is not part of the team who can check to make sure that the team stays true enough to the original design.

An example design is available.

Ideas Email (due Feb 23rd, noon)

On Friday, Feb 23rd, you must send a brief email to the instructor and TA describing the game that you are designing. A one or two sentence description is all that it takes.

By this point, you should have figured out what you are designing. You don't need to have worked through the design, just a 1-2 sentence description. If you are considering multiple games, you can send more than one idea (in the same email), although you need to pick one for the next deadline.

The purpose of this email is to let us know that you have begun to work on the project, and to make sure that you're not trying to do something that won't work for a class project game (see the ground rules).

An example of the Ideas email is part of the example design.

Game Designs (due Feb 26th (Monday) at 5pm)

Note: you need to have your design up on the Wiki by 5pm on Monday so your classmates can read and review them, and we can discuss them in class on Tuesday.

The design document is described here.

An example design is available.

Game Design Critiques (some due 9:30am on Feb 27th, some due 5pm Feb 28th)

Each design pair will need to write critiques / give feedback on EVERY design (other than your own) - (critiquing the sample design is optional). You should split this work evenly - each person writes critiques for half of the proposals.

These critiques need not be long. We have posted a sample critique that you can use as a guideline.

Before class on Tuesday, each person must have completed 2 critiques (and each team completed 4). This is important so we have something to talk about in class. By Wednesday afternoon, you must complete the rest of the critiques.

You should send your critiques to the TA by email. She will anonymize them and pass them along to the people who wrote them. To make this easy for her, please send one email containing your first two design critiques by 9:30am on the 27th. Then, send a second email to her containing the rest of your design critiques by 5:00pm on the 28th.

Also, by 5pm on Feb 28th, you should send the TA and instructor email describing your project preferences - which games you would prefer to work on, and if you have any preferences in who you want to work with (or don't want to work with). We cannot promise to honor these preferences, but we will use them in making group assignments.

After 5:00pm on Monday, Feb 26th, you will find a list of the game designs here.

Groups Assigned - March 1

We will annouce the project teams.

Project Proposal - Due March 6th

This is an updated version of the game design that your team has chosen to build for its project. Your entire team should work together to add additional details, and sketch out how your expect to pull it off.

The group project proposal is described here.

You must get two approvals before 5pm on March 6th:

1. You must get a designer of the original proposal who is not part of your project team to agree that your idea is still close enough to what they had proposed. This approval should be an email from them (that is cc'ed to the TA and instructor)
2. You must either get the OK of the instructor, or have scheduled a meeting for Tuesday afternoon (at the latest) to discuss your project. The entire project team need not attend the meeting (but at least 2 of the 4 should).

Note: if you do not post your proposal by 4pm on March 5th (and send email to the instructor alerting him that its there), there is no promise I will get to it before Tuesday afternoon.

You may not do any coding until you have gotten these approvals. If you get a proposal done earlier, you can get approval earlier and get started earlier.

You now have 3 weeks to actually build the thing...

Project Plan - Due March 13th

After the first week is done, you should have some stuff built - but more importantly you should have a good plan for how you're going to get your game finished in the next 2 weeks.

On Tuesday March 13th, members of your team need to meet with the instructor (the entire team need not be present, but at least 2 people, and preferably everyone) should come. This meeting needs to be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance.

Project Checkpoint - Due March 20th

Signs of life demo. Sometime before 5pm your group must meet with the TA and give a demo and discuss your progress. At least half of your group must attend this meeting, and it must be scheduled at least 24 hours ahead of time.

Your grade for this part will be the TA's subjective evaluation of the effort that you've put in, and how you've adapted your plans to make it so you'll have the best possible outcome next week.

More details to follow

Playtesting - Due March 27th

At 9:30 AM on March 27th (during class) we will playtest the games!

(We won't get to do all playtesting in this time slot - we'll have to schedule other times as well)

Every person must playtest at least 2 other groups games.

Each group must have their game playtested by the TA, the instructor, the "other designer" (e.g. the member of the original design pair who was not part of the group), and at least 2 other class members.

More details at Main.Playtesting

Game Reviews - Due March 29th, noon

You must write reviews of the games you playtested (at least 2). You might want to divide this into a public part (that everyone sees) and a private part (that you can email to the instructor and TA).

Your honest evaluation will help us in our evaluation of the projects. (e.g. in helping us determine what score the team gets for its playtest)

More details to follow

Game Project Final Documents - Due March 30th

More details are [here->Main.GameFinal] - that page is the definitive reference. If there's a discrepency, trust that page.

This is the groups "final handin" and includes all source code, documentation, ...

The group document should link to the individual group members post-mortems

See the Main.GameFinal page.

Playtesting Summary and Post-Mortem - Due March 30th

Each person will need to write their own post-mortem (this is not done as a team). There is a public part (that needs to be posted on the Wiki) a private part (that needs to be emailed to the instructor and TA), and an anonymous part.

In the public part:

• Your own assessment of your game. Do you like it?
• A list of what you think went right, and what you think went wrong. This should consider both the process, and the final product.
• A list of what you would have done again, and what you would have done differently.
• A summary of what you've learned from play-testing. What would you fix if you had more time?
• Any advice you'd have for future students.

In the private part:

• An evaluation of each team member's contribution (including your own), and of the overall group dynamics.
• A discussion of what you learned from this whole adventure (note: you can put this in the public part if you like).

In the anonymous part:

• 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 questionier (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.

More details are here