“The best way to learn games is to play games. The best way to make games is to work.” – Alan Emrich
Last things first: The
Final Course Project Game explained
During class next week between game project presentations (see below), you’ll be
‘pitching’ you ideas for your Final Course Project game. This will be done in a
manner very similar to your Final Project Game Pitch at the end of
Survey of the Game Industry.
A. Have three Inception Documents ready and bring them to class.
B. Starting with the game that you most want to do for your Final Course Project, you will ‘pitch’ them to the class, one at a time.
C. After each pitch (and, possibly, a few clarifying questions and answers), the class will vote by a show of hands on if they want to ‘fund’ that project with a grade (payable on Week 11).
1. If they accept your game proposal, you can stop pitching. You will be making that accepted game proposal for your Final Course Project Game.
2. If they reject your
game proposal, you’ll have to pitch your next idea. Ultimately, they’ll have to
choose from among your three proposals.
D. Your instructor will be grading the quality of your live pitch performance for up to 4 points.
E. After your Final Course Project Game has been selected by the class, you must hand in your three Inception Documents to the instructor who will be grading the corpus of this written work for up to 6 points.
The
Take-Home Midterm Exam Game explained
During class next week, you’ll be doing a ‘live demo’ of your Take-Home Midterm
Exam Game. This will be done in the exact same manner as your Final Project Game
Demo at the end of Game Prototyping.
A. The class, as a committee of the whole, will propose different game themes and then select one to be the theme of each student’s Take-Home Midterm Exam Game project.
B. Come to class next week with an original game design, employing that theme, created using Game Maker software. It can be any category of game (scrolling shooter, platformer, FPS, etc.) and appeal to as broad or narrow a market as you like (e.g., one-eyed psycho Goth Episcopal bovines is acceptable).
C. Your classmates will be grading your effort for up to 22 total points using a grading sheet and rubric that will be handed out at the beginning of class.
D. After the last midterm demo, your instructor will collect the grade sheets and grade them for up to 3 points.
This Week’s Tutorial Game
When we left class today, Game Maker Tutorial #14 (Pyramid Panic) was nearly (if not) complete. Your homework this week begins by finishing this tutorial lesson.
There is no required homework due for this game. (You midterm game and final game pitch presentation are the most important use of your time and attention during our interim between classes this week.)
However, you can do some modding for Pyramid Panic and garner yourself some serious Extra Credit. What sort of mods?
Adding new monster, wall, and / or treasure items (be sure to come up with appropriate artwork for them) – some ideas from The Maze Game in Game Prototyping class or Chapter 7’s game Koalabr8 might inspire you.
Adding Random Events (using “Create an instance of a random object” or perhaps a slim “die roll” chance to begin a Time Line with some interesting Actions).
Create new pyramid levels to explore, perhaps starting small (a tutorial?) at the “top” of the pyramid and getting progressively larger and more dangerous as you reach the pyramid’s tombs and catacombs.
Or perhaps take the explorer out of the pyramids entirely and build a set of mazes around the Amazon jungles or an Arctic wasteland.
Since this is an Extra Credit assignment, your .gm6 save game file is due at any time before the end of the course, either on disk or via email to the instructor.
