CISC 467010  -   Game Prototyping  -  Fall 2019

Instructor: Daniel Chester	TA: Mina Samizadeh
Office: 101G Smith Hall	Office: 102A Smith Hall
Hours: Tu/F 3:30 pm-4:30 pm and by appt.	Hours: M 11:00 am-1:00 pm
Phone: 831-1955	Phone: none
Email: User: chester Domain: udel.edu	Email: User: minasmz Domain: udel.edu

Textbook

The class web page can be found at http://www.cis.udel.edu/~chester/courses/467.html.

Course Description

Note: this CISC 467010 course can count as a technical elective for CSBS, CSBA and INSY majors. It can be part of a concentration.

Topics (tentative, not necessarily in the order to be covered)

• Initial game projects: Coin Dash, Escape the Maze, Space Rocks, Jungle Jump, (probably not 3D Minigolf)


• One or more additional projects: Each student will design and implement his/her own game. Possibly a simplfied version of your favorite video game?


• Sprite animation, creation of player and other objects in a game


• Programming behaviors in GDScript, a Python-like scripting language


• Collision detection


• Implementing the User Interface, (Heads-Up Display)


• Adding sound/music and sound effects


• Implementing levels with tilesets and tilemaps


• Rigid body physics


• Finite state machines


• Particle physics


• Why arrays are better than linked lists or complicated objects for game programming


• How game developers implement finite state machines


• The most important game designer skill is listening


• The designer creates an experience


• Games as a problem-solving activity


• The four basic elements of a game: mechanics, aesthetics, technology, story


• Design your game around a theme


• Brainstorming to get ideas


• Software engineering applied to games: prototyping, playtesting, revising, iteration


• Know your audience; who will play your game?


• Fulfilling the mental needs of players


• Games take place in a space, contain objects with attributes and states


• Hidden information


• The operative actions in a game


• The different kinds of rules in a game


• The skills required of players in a game


• The role of chance in games; basics of probability


• Relation between chance and skill


• Balancing various aspects of a game, such as fairness, challenge vs. success, meaningful choices, skill vs. chance, competition vs. cooperation, rewards


• The design of puzzles as components in games


• The design of interfaces, both physical and virtual


• Interfaces are composed of many channels of information and have several modes that need to be controlled


• Evaluating game experiences with interest curves


• Games as a new way to tell stories


• Story and game structures can be artfully merged with indirect control


• The different kinds of characters in games


• The structure of the virtual worlds in games


• How to do playtesting of your game


• Incorporating new technology in your games

Grading

• 4 programming projects (three from Godot book, one original by student) 24% Approximately 2.5 weeks per project.


• 4 written assignments based on other two books 24% Approximately 3 weeks per written assignment.


• midterm (Friday, October 18) 24%


• final exam (Wednesday, December 4) 24%

The numerical scores will be combined, not letter grades. Since the assignments and exams are not standardized, your course grade will depend not only on the weighted score you receive, but also on how your score compares with the score distribution for the whole class.

Policies

• All assignments are due by midnight ending the due date. Combine all files, if more than one, into one tar file or one zip file and email it to the TA.
• Homework will be accepted at the following class period after the due date, but the score will be reduced by 10 percent of the maximum possible score. The homework will not be accepted more than one week after the due date except in extreme and verifiable circumstances.
• All work on assignments must be your own. Do not collaborate with other students or copy their work. Do not copy from a book or other source unless I say otherwise. You may consult with each other about conceptual problems, but see the TA or me for help with details or debugging.

  If you get text or code from any source, including webpages on the Internet, books or other students, and present it as if it were your own, that is plagiarism. If the TA or I discover that you have plagiarized, I am obligated to report the incident to University authorities above the CIS Department. You must acknowledge and document such borrowings if you do use them. If they significantly reduce the amount of work you have to do for an assignment, you will lose points [this part of the policy may change; I will tell you if it does]; the grade you get is for your work, not somebody else's.

• If you can't come to scheduled office hours, please send me email; I'll be happy to schedule a meeting at some other mutually-agreed-upon time.

Assignments

Resources

The Godot game engine can be downloaded from https://godotengine.org. You can find information about our Godot book and errata at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Godot-Game-Engine-Projects.