Developing a New Major

need lessons on using photoshop/gimp to make sprites and background graphics, to create box art

need lessons on audio - using garage band and audacity to create sound effects and background music - need to know about loops and layering, need to think about emotion you want to evoke

1st semester - go thru tutorial, do the audio and photoshop lessons, retalk gameplay, genre conventions, rules, characters, story, do some levels for ideas we give them, talk about teams, documentation, make pitch docs, come up with an idea and do their pre-production by end of the semester

2nd semester is all about making their game - multiple levels, need sound, need game design doc, need instructions, need demo video, need box art, have playtestable levels every couple of weeks?

exercises for the first couple of classes before we go over any of the readings - have them put the info on their blog so we can come back to it later and to get hte used to creating blog posts, maybe find a picture to go with it or a video of their avorite quest- 1)pick a game you like and describe everything you experience during hte first 10 minutes. 2)PICK A FAVORITE MISSION OR QUEST and describe everytying yu see, everything you hear, every challenge you face, everythought you have while playing, every action you take. make a list - sights, sounds, mental activities, actions. tell them afterwards as we discuss that it is this combo that creates fun for hte player, when we get to ch21 have them compare their list of activities with the lists in the book - did their game have anything new to do, did they do things and not even notice till they saw the list?

as they develop their games have them look at the  lists in ch21 about what makes game fun adn not fun - which items from those lists are in their games - how can they add more fun? how can they reduce the not fun quotient. Look at the lists about things you can do in different genres - they have to identify a genre for hteir game - can they add any genre specific stuff to their game? Do theyhave any elements that are from other genres - do they detract from teh game? distract the user? why are they there?

need a section on puzzles - check out bob bates - http://www.scottkim.com/thinkinggames/GDC00/bates.html article about designing the puzzle, Perry book has a whole chapter on them (ch27, p. 615) and so does Challenges for game designers (the book about non-digital games by brathwaite and Schreiber) ch3 (puzzle design) and maybe ch5 (chance), need an assignment to do paper/pencil puzzles, play puzzle based games on different platforms and identify the puzzles using hte categories fromt eh chapter, need exercise to make puzzles, could do something with codes (letters, colors, flags, hand signals) - the challenge book has challenge 3 on p. 53 about password breaking and codes, some interesting puzzle creation projects on p. 56-57 - #6 (turn a single player puzzle like a sudoku into a 2 palyer competitive game), #2 (create tile based game where tiles only go together 1 way - do as solo and hten sas multi-player game)

chs I’d want to use from the Perry book - 2 (brainstorming), 4 (what publishers want), 9 (story), 11 (scenarios), 12 (characters), 13 (char roles/jobs), 14 (enemies), 15 (char abilities), 16 (speech), 19 (objects/locations), 21 (experiential design), 23 (goals), 24 (rewards), 27 (puzzles), 28 (pacing), 30 (communicating w/ player), 31 (common design problems)

chs from Rabin book - chapters are long, maybe thy’re the core of a whole class or a workshop instead of a weekly assigned reading?, do we read and use as bakground or give them handouts or have them buy the new book which isn’t a bad idea because the price isn’t too bad - but rabin + perry? might be a little steep — ch 6.6 (lighting), 6.9 (audio design & production), 7.1 (game production & project management), 5.1 (graphics), 5.2 (character animation), 3.5 (debugging), 2.2 (game design), 3.1 (teams)

chs from the Fullerton book - ch3 (formal elements),  ch6 (conceptualization), ch7 (prototyping), ch8 (digital prototyping, 9 (playtesting), ch10 (functionality, completeness, balance), ch14 (design document)

when we talk playtesting - bring in info from the game usability book - probably we need to read and use as background

Trackback URL