Communication Lab 3
Concept Workshop
Today's discussion is to help you complete the
concept document,
which is due this week. As we have mentioned in class, the concept document for
this course is a little different than the one for 3152. We want you to make a slide
presentation that covers the highlights of your game. It should be created as if you
were going to do an oral presentation for your game (though you are not doing any oral
presentation beyond what you already did for the
pitch session).
If you are in doubt, the instructions page has a lot of examples for what we are looking
for in this document. We suggest that you look at them. But for today's activity,
we suggest that you focus on two things.
Competitive Analysis
At the start of class, Traci will talk a little bit about
competitive analysis, which is
one of the new features in 4152. In 3152, the discussion about the competition
was very minimal. However, if you are planning on a commercial release or submitting
to a festival, it is something that you need to take more seriously.
The worksheet above is intended to give you direction for this discussion section.
However, we are not expecting you to fill it out and submit it. We are expecting you
to integrate your results into the concept document.
Game Mechanics
As we explain in the assignment instructions,
this concept document is more of a slide deck than the document from 3152. That means
you need to be able to convey things visually with very little text. Spend the class
time sketching your game mechanics with no text. Your sketches should include the touch
gesture/interface and clearly show how it affects the game state. Consider the following
picture from Magic Moving Mansion Mania.
Remember, this sketch does not need to be screenshot-level quality. Most of the
example documents you see are final drafts, after the game is done. For now, stick
figures and squiggles are fine.
But the real challenge is this: can you understand what is going on in the sketch without
much text? This activity is a good time to confer with other groups in the section.
Show them your sketch. What do they see? What confuses them? How can you improve your
sketch to make it more clear?
|