Gameplay Prototype

Your second presentation is your gameplay prototype. It is meant to be a “throw away” prototype. It is not necessarily going to be part of your final project. Instead it should clearly show off one gameplay element. The best type of thing that you could do is have a character on the screen and show how you control it in the game. If there are any challenges, they should be simple. It is even okay if your prototype is simply a “toy” and not a game, provided that you show off interesting actions. However, it must be interactive.

Because it is a throw-away prototype, it does not have to be written in the same language as your final product. It does not have to be on a mobile device; it does not even have to run in your device simulator. Just make the quickest software prototype that you can.

Table of Contents

Presentation Format

Your class presentation will consist of two parts. In addition to the software prototype, we are also expecting a (short) presentation from the designers on your team. Because gameplay prototype does not need finished art assets, we find that the designers often feel left out in this presentation. Therefore, we are asking for some deliverables from your artists as well.

Software Prototype

Due to the constraints of the mid-week break, we will have roughly 10 minutes per group for the presentation (we will spread out a lot more for the next prototype). We want the bulk of this time (6-7 minutes) to be devoted to showing off the software prototype. This can be an ad-hoc presentation where one person plays the prototype while another provides running commentary. The only requirement is that you clearly show off what the prototype does, and discuss your reason for building this particular prototype.

While presenting your software prototype, you may be interrupted by the audience for questions. In particular, you should be prepared to answer the following questions:

  • What has this prototype taught you about your game?
  • Has the prototype forced you to change your gameplay? If so, why?
  • What are your plans for the technical prototype?

Design Ideas

Your designers should spend no more than 3 minutes (we are tight for time, so keep it short) of the remaining time with their presentation. All we want to see from the designers at this stage are ideas. We want to see signs that your team is thinking ahead about what this game will look like.

There are no strict requirements for the designers. We simply want to see early concept art about the game. The presentation can include any or even all of the following.

  • Environmental or in-game concept art
  • Basic character art
  • Level-design storyboards

We are serious about the 3 minute limit. We will cut you off mid-sentence if you take too long.

Presentation Schedule

As we said above, you will have 10 minutes for your demonstration, which includes time spent on questions. While we would like you to playtest, there is no ENGRC section this week and hence no official playtest for this prototype. We will go into more depth with the technical prototype.

So that you are prepared, the presentation schedule is as follows:

Monday (March 8)

  • Dire Deal (Catana Games)
  • Roshamboogie (Moosey Studios)
  • Ghosted (Star Soup Games)
  • Core Impact (Ellipsis)

Friday (March 12)

  • Lab Cat (Fuzzy Kiwi Studios)
  • Sea Slanty (Humpback Whale)
  • Lumia (Coffee Powered Studios)
  • Panic Painter (Dragon Glass Studios)
  • Phase Dash (Bite-Sized Studios)

Submission

Due: Sat, Mar 13 at 11:59 PM

The file sizes of CUGL makes it impossible to turn anything in to CMS (which has a 100 MB limit). Therefore, you are not submitting any software to CMS. Instead, we want you to do to the following.

Grant the Course Staff GitHub Access

All of the course staff (including instructors and TAs) need access to your GitHub repository. In addition to allowing us access your software builds, this will help us monitor team member contributions throughout the semester. See the secure staff page for our GitHub ids.

If possible, we prefer that you use an internal Cornell repository over a public GitHub repo. In that case our ids are the same as our netids.

Create a Release

A GitHub release allows us to download a snapshot of your project so far. It does not have to be compiled (because GitHub has a similar file size restriction on binary files), but it should be ready to compile. If we have to do anything special to compile it, or if it is not guaranteed to compile on all platforms, you should state this in a README file.

Complete the Two-Week Report

Finally, you should not forget to turn in your first two week report. This will allow us to see how you are organizing you time, and make suggestions for future milestones.