Instructor: Dan Frost frost@ics.uci.edu   Office: Bren 5058 (949) 824-1588 (Why UCI? 1 Luv!) Office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 10:30 - 11:30, or by appointment
Teaching assistant: Ish Rishabh   irishabh at ics.uci.edu

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

Useful links:

• Design Document drafts and pitches -- schedule and assignments
• Google Map for LCAD
• LCAD Game Art program
• Ucigame game library - 20091015 beta version
• Javaground
• Recommended by Christopher Schmitz:
  • Designing for Performance - at http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/design/performance.html
  • Better Programmer Art - at http://www.gamedev.net/reference/art/features/CoderGameArt/default.asp
  • Fragmentation of Mobile Applications - at http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~damithch/df/device-fragmentation.htm
• Top 12 trends of the video game industry

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.
• The last day to add the course is Friday, Oct. 2. The last day to drop the course is Friday, Oct. 9.

Important Dates

• Sept 28: Guest speaker, Christopher Schmitz from Javaground
• Sept. 30: Guest speaker, Prof. Sandy Appleoff from LCAD
• Oct. 2, 9:00-9:50 am: First team meetings
• Oct. 2, 6:30-8:30 pm: Mashup with art students at LCAD (optional but encouraged)
• Oct. 19, Oct. 21, Oct. 23: Team pitches
• more to be listed

Assignments and projects

• First individual assignment, due Tuesday, 9/29/2009 6:00 pm: 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 irishabh@ics.uci.edu; the subject line should be "CS113" followed by your name, e.g. "CS113 Dan Frost".
• Second individual assignment: several readings:
  • TBD.
• Third individual assignment, due Monday, 10/19/2009: Comment on another team's draft design.
• Fourth individual assignment: a small game, based on the Ucigame framework (please use the latest beta version), due Friday, 10/30/2009. Submit via Checkmate.
• 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. Send by email to frost@ics.uci.edu. Due Monday, 10/5/2009, 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, 10/15/2009. Structure your Design Doc based on our recommended Design Doc structure.
  3. A presentation, or "pitch," of the team's game idea in the fourth week of the class, Monday, 10/19/2009, Wednesday, 10/21/2009, or Friday, 10/23/2009.
  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, 10/28/2009. This is also on the web.
  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 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+, 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 - Ucigame game (0: none; 1-2: very partial; 3: nice game; 4: excellent — extra credit)
5 - attendance on five days (roll will be taken on six 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 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.