| Game Protoyping | |
| Instructor: Lindsay Grace |
Making the Game: What Happens After our Rapid Prototypes?
You are now on your way to designing a game. At this midterm-stage you have an idea that you should at least be mildly excited about. That means you need to build a diagnosable prototype. From this point on, each student will have a specific role in the development of your game prototype. These roles will define your individual responsibility and it will also have bearing on your grade. If the art is great, and you are the artist, not only does the game do well in the class, but grade will gleam too. Of course, great graphics and a lousy design do not a good game make.
I strongly suggest you do some reading on what roles people typically play in game development.
Game Design for Teens: Chapter 1
http://books.google.com/books?id=xx6gmEsOAE8C&pg=PA3&dq=game+design+for+teams
The book is an easy read and has some reminders about the basics you learned in GAD110 and GAD116.
Team Roles:
These are the roles that you must fill on your team(min 1 person per role):
If you want to know more about the specific roles, or read about real jobs in these roles, I've listed them here(http://aii.lgrace.com/documents/html/gad_440_roles.htm). Since this list is two months old, some of the jobs have been filled :)
You should only have one Game Designer, but everyone will participate in shaping the game design and level design. In fact, it’s a good idea to help each other as your goal is to get the game made, not just get your part done. You are a team after all :)
The game programmer may not necessarily need to program, but they are responsible for game the technology work. If you chose to develop in Half Life 2/Source, for example, they will become intimately acquainted with the world building tools and solve problems like importing meshes and audio. In the next 5 weeks you can also choose to develop a “non-playable” demo (review the reading above if that is unclear), but eventually we will be building a playable game for your demo reel. It wouldn't hurt to use the programming skills you learned in Progrogramming for the Artist.
At the end of the quarter, each of you will complete an evaluation form that will describe what you did and what your peers completed. This review will be run like an employee review, giving you the opportunity to state your achievements and identify places you would like to improve during Prototyping II. This form is an important factor in your final grade.
What is a Weekly Delta?
In addition to brief lectures you will be reporting on your progress weekly. The delta is a change report. It's an opportunity for you to state your progress, and very importantly, to identify lag in your project. If you still don't have a mesh imported or an art pipeline week after week, we know something is very, very wrong. You should be ready to present your progress in a semi-formal way. I'd love to have Excel spreadsheets with people's names, the task they are assigned, and whether or not they are complete. I know that's probably more than I can ask of busy students, so everyone should be prepared to show their progress quickly (e.g. rendered models on a website, design sketches digitized and ready to show, etc). It is not enough to ask people what they've done before the delta begins and trust their claims. You want evidence or your project may slip away from you.
What Happened to the Producer Role?
The producer’s role never really worked out, so we won’t have a producer. Instead the game designer will cover the producer’s administrative and leadership roles. That means that weekly deltas will fall under the producer’s responsibility. The producer role really didn’t help anyone’s portfolio anyway : )
We will reexamine roles for GAD440, Advanced Prototyping. Your ability to continue in your current role will depend on your success in that role during this class.
Provided by Lindsay Grace for students of the Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago. These documents may be used by others when properly credited. Please email lgrace at aii edu for more information.