Assignment 14
Beta Release

Demo: Monday, April 27th at 11:15 am
Due: Thursday, April 30th at 11:59 pm

Your third presentation is your beta presentation. The beta demonstration should show off a clearly recognizable (but unfinished) game. Your game should have a clear progression. This means different levels of progressive difficulty (e.g. easy, medium, and hard). For games that do not use levels, you need to clearly demonstrate how the game gets harder over time.

While you may still be working on art, we do not want to hear about major future gameplay elements. Anything in your gameplay spec that is listed as "critical" must be finished. After beta, you should not be doing anything but tweaking parameters and making levels from your existing gameplay elements. You can add some "desirable" features, but only if the game with your critical elements is finished with level design and testing. In fact, if you add any new elements at all, we suggest that you take a "snapshot" of your beta release before continuing. Save a copy of that code in some folder that will never, ever be erased or modified.

This is an important release, because we will finally be making grade predictions after this release. We had wanted to make grade predictions after pre-beta, but the games were not far enough along to do that. We will not only predict your grade on that game, but your overall grade in the class. You can use this information to decide whether or not you want to switch to S/U before the end of the course.

Class Presentation

The vast majority (up to 75%) of your presentation should consist of someone playing the game and showing it off to the class. You should have one person playing it while another team member narrates the play; the narrator and player should not be the same person (so that the player can concentrate on playing). The narrator should point out game play elements, challenges, and strategies as the player encounters them. We expect this to be somewhat rehearsed. You should develop a script for this presentation and stick to it (to the best of your player's ability at the game).

Level Design Patterns

As with all of the presentations, we do want a slide presentation with design ideas. However, the design presentation will be different this time. We no longer want to see art in your design presentation. Our philosophy is that, from this point forward, any finished art should be incorporated into the game.

Instead, we want you to review your level design ideas. In this slide presentation, we want the following:

• A brief of your design philosophy (as stated in the gameplay specification)
• At least three basic patterns that you have identified in your game.
• A complex pattern that combines two or more of these patterns together.

To come up with your design patterns, you should review the level design lecture from class. You also consider the feedback that you received on the level design critique.

Presentation Schedule

Once again, we will be handling this release as an online presentation. The format will be the same as last time (though hopefully we have learned a few things). We are also going to use the 2:30 lab section for additional presentations this time. If you are in that section, you are required to attend. Students in the other section are encouraged, but not required, to attend. We will swap sections next release.

When we get near the presentation data, we will include secure Zoom links below. You will need to use your netid to access these links. The presentation schedule is as follows.

Monday (April 27) [Zoom Recording]

• mooove studios (Pinball Mania)
• Pirate Ship Productions (Runecasters)
• Coconaut Studio (Milky Way Gourmet)

Wednesday (April 29) [Zoom Recording]/h4>

• Singularity Studios (System Access)
• Studio Cupid (Swipe Right)
• B-Side Games (Deck Jockey)

Section 202 (2:30-3:20) [Zoom Recording]

• Enigma Studios (Spectral)
• onewordstudios (Sweetspace)
• Synergy Studio (Eidolon)

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Submission

Due: Thursday, April 30th at 11:59 pm

Once again for this assignment, we ask you to turn in your release. That means an executable. We do not want to have to build the game from software. For iPhone, that means a TestFlight release. For Android that means creating an APK. This is going to make playtesting easier.

We are again asking for you to turn this in before the Friday class (so Thursday night at the latest). We are going to have another playtest session for this release. Make sure to read the details in this playtesting session as we are asking for a little more from you this time.

However, this time there is something to turn in to CMS. We want the slide presentation this time, as we always need good level design examples and you do not have a level design document (the design specification precluded the need to collect previous design slides). Convert the slides to a PDF and submit them as levels.pdf to CMS.

Finally, you should not forget to turn in your fourth two week report (which is due on Saturday). This will allow us to see how you are organizing you time, and make suggestions for the final milestones.