Instructor: Dan Frost frost@ics.uci.edu   Office: Bren 5058 (949) 824-1588 (Why UCI? 1 Luv!) Office hours: Wednesdays, 10:00 - 12:00
Teaching assistant: Vivek Singh   singhv at uci.edu

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

Useful links:

• Ucigame game library
• Design Document drafts and pitches -- schedule and assignments
• Final presentation schedule and information

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.
• I will not sign add, drop, or change of grade cards after the second week (April 11).

Assignments and projects

• First individual assignment, due Friday, 4/4/2008: Statement of interests. Send by email your name, major, grade option for the course, background related to computer game development, and game development interests. Describe the type of game you'd like to help develop, an aspect of computer games you would like to work on, and any other information which will help us assign you to a team. If you have a team formed, each member of the team should send an email naming all the other members of the team. Your email may be posted on the web, so don't include anything you don't want widely known. Send email to singhv@uci.edu; the subject line should be "CS113" followed by your name, e.g. "CS113 Dan Frost".
• Second individual assignment: several readings:
  • Dogma 2001: A Challenge to Game Designers, by Ernest Adams. [Gamasutra]
  • Using the Hero's Journey in Games, by Troy Dunniway. [Gamasutra]
• Third individual assignment: a small game, based on the Ucigame framework, due Friday, 4/18/2008. Submit via Checkmate.
• Fourth individual assignment, due Monday, 4/28/2009: Comment on another team's draft design.
• Fifth individual assignment: weekly status reports, due Mondays of sixth through tenth 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. Send by email to frost@ics.uci.edu. Due Wednesday, 4/9/2008, by noon.
  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. Due Thursday, 4/24/2008. 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 sixth week of the class, Tuesday, 4/29/2008, Thursday, 5/1/2008, or Tuesday, 5/6/2008.
  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, 5/7/2008. This is also on the web.
  5. A presentation of the game development status in eighth or ninth 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 a users manual, revised design document, individual statements about the course of the project, and a CD with source code, executables, art and music files, and at least two screen shots. Due in Finals Week.
  8. A short video of your game.
  9. Participation in the CS 113/Informatics 125 Open House, held during the Final Exam period, 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+, 75 or 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 (A).

Individual accomplishments are worth at most 15 points:

3 - Ucigame game (0: none; 1-2: very partial; 3: nice game; 4: excellent)
5 - attendance on five days (will have six possibilities)
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 better 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.