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Assignment 6
|
Week | Task | Deadline |
---|---|---|
Week 1 | Team Workflow | 1/26/19 |
Week 2 | Initial Proposal | 2/02/19 |
Week 3 | Concept Document | 2/09/19 |
Week 4 | Concept Revision | 2/16/19 |
Week 5 | Nondigital Prototype | 2/18/19 |
Milestone Document | 2/23/19 | |
Week 6 |
February Break | |
Gameplay Specification | 3/02/19 | |
Week 7 | Gameplay Prototype | 3/09/19 |
Week 8 | Architecture Specification | 3/16/19 |
Design Specification | 3/16/19 | |
Week 9 | Technical Prototype | 3/18/19 |
Week 10 | Document Revisions | 3/30/19 |
Spring Break | ||
Week 12 | Alpha Release | 4/08/19 |
Week 13 | Game Manual | 4/20/19 |
Week 14 | Beta Release | 4/22/19 |
Week 15 | Final Document Portfolio | 5/04/19 |
Week 16 | Final Release | 5/06/19 |
Week 17 | GDIAC Showcase | 5/17/19 |
You should provide us with a milestone for every two week period that ends with a deliverable in bold after nondigital prototype (e.g. gameplay prototype, technical prototype, etc.). You should start each milestone with the following information:
In addition, you should provide us with a short paragraph detailing the following elements:
What do you expect to show us at the end of this two-week milestone? Please be reasonable in setting these goals. Teams should pick a small list of features from the final project, and implementing them over this two-week sprint.
Obviously, spring deliverables should include the tasks in the schedule above. However, it is also a good idea to put in smaller tasks that are important, but not on the schedule. For example, we require that each team completes a level editor for their game. We strongly recommend that teams finished this by alpha release. However some groups only create a simple editor for alpha, pushing most of the work on the level editor off until beta (and their games are not as good because of this).
Also keep in mind issues such as game AI. If your game is a strategy game, where AI really matters, then teams should start working on it right away. However, if it is a platformer or other game where AI is less important, then teams can delay it until the end.
Now that you know what the deliverables are, how can the team measure success? Or more appropriately, how would you tell that the sprint was a failure? Answers like "playable gameplay prototype" are not enough; we need to know what you mean by terms like "playable.”
To help you with each test for acceptance, imagine that we are grading the team’s milestone deliverable. How should we evaluate it for a grade? What would count as an A and what would count as a B? While we will not actually give letter grades on an individual milestone, this is a good way to express the test for acceptance.
It is very important that teams create concrete goals for the tests for acceptance. Subjective criteria like "the game is fun" are very hard to measure, and so we cannot tell if teams passed the test or not. On the other hand, teams can measure elements such as "My roommate really likes the game," or "The majority of the focus group we invited off the street believe the game is better than Modern Warfare." Other examples of good tests are "We can play the game for 20 minutes without it crashing," or "Our artist, who has no programming experience, can use the level editor to make a level."
In the test for acceptance, teams identified how graders might "grade" the teams' milestones. Given this scaffolding, does your team believe this is an easy A? Or is there something that plagues the team? It is okay if this is the case, but you should list those concerns here.
Be honest in your answers. Failing to meet a milestone is okay; this class is all about failure. Hiding the reasons why you failed, however, is a no-no; we are likely to subtract from the team’s final game grade if we find "surprising" problems at the end of the course.
Once you understand the deliverables, the test for acceptance, and the risks, it is time to delegate tasks in more detail that in the team workflow document. Hard tasks should be given to team members capable of finishing them. Use the labs to give you some idea of each team member's strengths and weaknesses.
In assigning tasks, we do not need you to assign hours (yet). Just tell us roughly what each person should be focusing on each week. Do not worry if you cannot think of everything; this is the one thing you will change the most as the semester progresses.
Because we are always tinkering with course, we do not post the instructions for each of the deliverables above until the start of that sprint. That might seem a little unfair; we are asking you to mention deliverables without actually telling you what we are expecting for each deliverable. But we are only asking for a good-faith effort here.
In order to help you with your milestones, here is what we are roughly expecting for each major deliverable.
In addition to these milestones, please remember to allocate time/people for testing and debugging. That includes both playtesting and good old unit tests. Most of the milestones we see are written as if the team expects all of the code to be perfect on the first try.
Level design is another important piece in milestones. Programming is only part of what you need to do. A game without content is nothing.
It is not as important to get the milestone document correct as it was to get the concept document and gameplay specification correct. However, it is always good to get it as right as possible on the first try. Therefore, we have provided some examples of solid milestone documents from semesters past. You should use these as templates when writing your own milestone document.
The most recent example, this document was made for the game Squeak & Swipe in Spring 2016. It is one of the better examples from this class. It is short, but covers all of the key concepts. It also does an excellent job of identifying deliverables and breaking them down into tasks for individual team members.
Another milestone document from Spring 2016, this document is for the mobile game Inari. You will notice that this is much terser (particularly with descriptions and tests for acceptance) that Squeak & Swipe. However, it does convey all of the information that we are asking for. While we think the Squeak & Swipe milestones are much better, this document is the bare minimum we are looking for.
This milestone document was made for the game Dispossessed, created for CS/INFO 3152 in Spring 2015. This team had a lot of the same members as Squeak & Swipe, which is why the document is similar. It is once again an excellent document to emulate.
We have mentioned the game Lifted several times in class. Their milestone document shows an excellent understanding of the term "Test for Acceptance". All of their tests are great; you should use them as a model for designing your own tests.
As we said, your grade for this document is part of your team workflow grade. Because that, you should also use this time to update your team workflow document (assuming that you did not get a perfect grade the first time). If you update your document, you should add it as a PDF to the CMS submission. If you do not update your workflow, your next chance will be at the two-week report following the gameplay prototype.
Due: Saturday, February 23rd at 11:59 pm
You should submit a PDF file called milestones. Again, we ask that the file be a PDF so that we cannot annotate it in order to return it to you with feedback for possible revision. It is fine if you create the document in a program like Microsoft Word, but you should convert it to PDF before submission.
The milestone document is not a major part of your document grade. You will get a lot of feedback on it, but we will not grade it as harshly as the concept document and gameplay specification. We are not expecting you to revise the milestone document. Instead, you should treat the two-week reports as your milestone revisions. If we make a comment about the milestone document or the two-week report, we expect you to improve for the next two-week report. If a problem persists for two reports in a row, then we will take off points.