Instructor: Dan Frost frost@ics.uci.edu   Office: Bren 5058 (949) 824-1588 (Why UCI? 1 Luv!) Office hours: Mondays, 11:00 - 11:50, and by appointment
Teaching assistant: Colin Wheelock   colin.wheelock at gmail.com

Goal: To learn about the science, art, craft, and industry of computer games.

Useful links:

• Team Information Form
• Final presentation schedule and information
• Design Document drafts and pitches -- schedule and assignments
• LCAD Game Art program
• Need space on the web? Consider ICS's web space and NACS's WebFiles
• Ucigame game library - 20101216 beta version
• Some PPTs on modeling and rigging: #1, #2, #3.

Ground rules

• Your grade will be based mostly on your team's accomplishments, which are primarily the design document, the delivered game, and the final presentation. You will also create a small game individually. No quizzes, tests, or final exam.
• If you add the course after Sept. 26, or if you do not fill out and turn in the Team Information Form, you will not be able to work on a team and the best possible grade you can get for the course will be a B.

Important Dates

• Wednesday, Sept. 28: team announcements and first team meetings
• Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Monday, Oct. 24, 26, 28, and 31: Team pitches
• Monday, Wednesday, Monday, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 23, 28, and 30: 9th week status reports

Assignments and projects

• First individual assignment, due Monday, 9/26/2011 9:00am: Team Information Form.
• Second individual assignment: several readings:
  • TBD.
• Third individual assignment, due Sunday, 10/23/2011: Comment on another team's draft design.
• Fourth individual assignment: a small game, due Sunday, 10/16/2011. Submit via the EEE Drop Box. If you haven't made a game before and are comfortable with Java, a good choice is to use the Ucigame framework. You can use any language and/or library; run anything exotic by Prof. Frost first.
• Fifth individual assignment: six weekly status reports, due Mondays of sixth through Finals weeks.

• The major part of the course is a project, to be completed by a team. The project will be to design and implement substantial portions of a computer game. The project consists of the following:
  1. A statement of team composition. Name the students on the team, the grade option of each student, the major of each student, the team name, brief descriptions of two ideas you are considering for the team's game, and the time and place your team will meet for three hours every week. If you plan to work with students from LCAD, or anyone outside of the class, please mention that as well. Send by email to frost@ics.uci.edu. Friday, 10/30/2011, by 5:00pm.
  2. A draft design document for the game. This should be between 20 and 40 pages in length. It should be on the World Wide Web in HTML or PDF format (or another format that permits scrolling through the entire document). Due Wednesday, 10/19/2011 (by the end of the day). Email the URL of your draft to Prof. Frost. Structure your Design Doc based on our recommended Design Doc structure.
  3. A presentation, or "pitch," of the team's game idea in the fifth (or possibly sixth) week of the class Monday, 10/24/2011, Wednesday, 10/26/2011, or Friday, 10/28/2011.
  4. A final design document for the game. This should be about 30 to 40 pages in length. In addition to describing the game, technologies, art, and game play in detail, it should describe the specific responsibilities of each team member. Due Wednesday, 11/2/2011. This is also on the web, and the URL should be emailed to Prof. Frost.
  5. A presentation of the game development status in ninth or tenth week.
  6. A presentation of the game in Finals Week. Your team's grade will be based on the game as of this presentation.
  7. A completion document, which includes an optional users manual, revised design document, individual statements about the course of the project, and a CD with source code, executables, art and music files, a video of the game being played, and at least two screen shots. Due in Finals Week.
  8. Participation in the CS 113/Informatics 125 Open House, held during Finals week, TBD.

Scoring and grading

Each game project will receive a letter grade, e.g. A, A-, B+, B (these are by far the most common grades). The game project is worth at most 75 points, as follows: A+, 73 to 75; A, 71; A-, 68; B+, 65; B, 62; and so on.

The game design document (including pitch and 9th week status reports) is worth up to 10 points; most teams will get 9 (an A).

Individual accomplishments are worth at most 15 points:

3 - Individual game (0: none; 1-2: very partial; 3: nice game; 4: excellent — extra credit)
5 - attendance (roll will be taken on six or more dates)
1 - comment on another team's draft design document
6 - six progress reports

Special Accommodations: Any student who feels he or she may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss his or her specific needs. Also contact the Disability Services Center at (949) 824-7494 as soon as possible to ensure that such accommodations are implementationed in a timely fashion.

At the Computer Game Design Conference on May 6, 1998, there was a panel on design docs. Moderator Alex Dunne referenced a real design document which was submitted by panelist John Jack, a producer at Monolith. This design doc was from the company's recent computer game, "Claw". Claw Design Document.