/108-group-project-1

MIT LicenseMIT

108 Group Project 1

Premise

You are part of Imaginary AB and have been working on a worthy successor to Small Theft Auto: Södermalm up until now. While the release is still pending, your company has chosen to re-allocate some of the resources of multiple teams (including you) to begin prototyping the Company’s next title before the New Year in order to satisfy stakeholder demand before the annual general meeting in January.

Your company is part of a larger network of companies and the board has agreed on the recent success of Yac AB’s Role-Playing Game Boarhammer 42 meaning that there is currently a market gap for RPGs. Your team has therefore been selected to begin work on a polished Vertical Slice to serve as a Proof-of-Concept for a larger endeavor.

Thanks to a common management, your team has been provided access to the company network’s asset database including assets from Boarhammer 42.

The Genre has been narrowed down to an ARPG and the expected set of features has been collected by a board of designers.

Game Requirements

Mandatory

  • ARPG
  • Consumable Items
  • Equippable Items
  • Action-Interaction with Environment and/or NPCs
  • Experience & Level System
  • Explorable Environment in Level(s)

Optional

  • Spell System
  • Multiple Levels
  • Endboss (NPC or Puzzle)
  • Endless Play

Learning goals

  • Plan and carry out teamwork.
  • Understanding of your chosen area within game development.
  • Demonstrate and communicate a game development process and pipeline.
  • Communicate and present the project outcome.
  • Learn or further develop skills within a chosen area of game development by yourself
  • Understanding the ins and outs of using asset databases to accomplish your goals

Attendance

  • Attendance will be taken by the team leads and turned over weekly
    • According to your team's contract
  • At over 25% of unexcused absence there is a risk of failure

Grading

To achieve a pass (G)

Team Deliverables

  • The project grade needs to be pass (G)
    • You need to complete your Baseline Milestones, or renegotiate them
    • The game needs to be playable (Vertical Slice)
  • Technical Design Document needs to be submitted
  • Presentation of the project ́s outcom
    • discuss the (iterative) process and learnings
  • A working build of your game on itch.io
    • gameplay trailer
    • screenshots
    • description

Individual Deliverables

  • Journal with daily entries (on all workdays, aim for ~40h per week)
    • What have you completed today?
    • What issues have you run into?
    • How have you approached them
    • 2-3 full sentences
    • Ensure to not be too repetitive
    • If you work on similar components multiple days in a row, emphasize the differences
  • Individual Post Mortems

To achieve a pass with distinction (VG)

  • All of the criterias for G.
  • Show good craftsmanship within your field.
    • Present your work in the final presentation
      • Name major challenges
      • And how you solved them
  • Prepare some of your code for Code Review with your lecturer
    • Explain, how the code works
    • Engage in discussing alternative solutions

Challenges

Project Management

You are required to collaborate effectively as a team. This includes:

  • Following the Scrum Process
    • Sprint Planning
    • Daily Scrum
    • Sprint Review
    • Sprint Retrospective
  • Managing the Backlog
    • User Stories
    • Acceptance Criteria

Game Design

There are no Game Designers on your team for this project. You will need to manage a few Game Design responsibilities:

  • User Interface / User Experience
  • Design of Gameplay Mechanics
  • Parametrisation & Balancing Of Gameplay Mechanics & Dynamics
  • Level Design

Art

Pre-Existing Art Assets will be available to use. Artists will not be available to make a choice as to what Asset Packs to use. Also, no artists will be available to implement the assets or tie them together.

  • Selection of assets
  • Implementation of assets

Programming

Programmers will need to implement the various systems and assets such as:

  • Setting the Scope of User Stories
  • Implementing the User Stories

Sound

For Sound Design, free sound libraries are available. User Stories are not completed unless sound effects exist to support them. e.g. Walking SFX, Button Click SFX, Attack SFX, Background Music.

  • Selection of sounds
  • Implementation of sounds

Teacher(s) Role

Your teacher(s) will take on the mantle of director(s) and stakeholder.

Scope

The scope will be divided into "Must-Have" and "Should-Have" milestones. If you need items to be added or removed to realise your vision, you need to negotiate for it with your teacher(s).

  • You can break down the scope into tickets for your backlog as you see fit
  • Milestone goals need to be defined before the first milestone period’s kick-off (November 20th).

Remember to fulfil the Game Requirements