CS/INFO 3152: Introduction to Computer Game Development

Report 4
Golden Master Report

Due: Tuesday, May 12th at 11:59 pm

This two week-report covers what you did to get ready for golden master. Technically it has been less than two weeks between beta and golden master, but this is the last two week report before Showcase (the report after Showcase has a very different flavor. So it is particularly important. This will also be the last CATME survey of the course.

Once again, we would like a report formatted like the example below. If you received any negative comments about your previous report, you should address those this time. Hopefully everything is streamlined this time.


Progress Report

Your report is divided into two halfs: the progress report and predictions for the next milestone. In the first part, you should begin with a short description of what the entire group did for these past two weeks. This description should be no more than a paragraph or two. After this summary, you should begin a more detailed breakdown for each individual on the team.

Activity Breakdown

For each team member you need to create a subsection. At the start of the subsection you should give short description of the primary responsbilities of that team member over the course of this prototype. This needs be no longer than a paragraph.

After this paragraph, provide a table where each row consists of the following:

  • An individual task that the team member worked on or was supposed to work on
  • Whether or not this task was completed, and the data completed if appropriate.
  • The estimate of hours from the previous two week report
  • The actual of the number of hours spent on that task

Note that this is different from the previous two week report. Now you are comparing your predictions from the previous report to what actually happened. This is exactly what the example report does, so you should look at it if you have any questions.

After the table, you should provide the total number of hours that this person worked over this reporting period. Please be honest here. We never count off for not working "enough" hours. Our primary concern is that work is well-balanced between team members


Showcase Predictions

Technically class is finished; there is no requirement for you to keep working on your game. Ideally, you should just need to clean up bugs and make sure that the game will run in the ACCEL lab. If this is the case, just write a quick paragraph at the end of the report saying that you are done, and why you feel no more work is necessary.

However, if it is not in the state to earn the grade that you desire, then you probably need to do some more work. If that is the case, then we need one more future prediction from you: the week before Showcase.

There are no hours requirements for this week; we know that many of you have finals and so it is unfair to require a set amount of hours. All work in this week should be voluntary and as much as the team member is willing to give. However, if a team member is going to work, tell us what they will do, and how long it will take.

The format for the predictions should be exactly the same format as the activity breakdown. That is, have a subsection for each team member. For each person, give a short description of their primary responsbility. Then give a table with the list of activities and hours.


Example

The example linked above is an (edited) version of a two-week report submitted by the game Dispossessed in Spring 2015. We have removed the parts of the report that are no longer relevant for this year. What remains is exactly what we are looking for in a two-week report.

This report is taken from later in the semester, as the team had really gotten into a grove at this point and was submitting excellent reports. As a result, the progress report compares the number of hours worked to the hours predicted. You did not make any predictions before this report, and so this is not relevant. But we want everything else.


Submission

Due: Tuesday, May 12th at 11:59 pm

You should submit a PDF file called report. 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.