Class Hours: 10:05 – 2:40
Mr. Cronin
Notes
- Skills Kickoff Day!
- Remember that you end up in English after lunch.
- Turn in that missing work as soon as possible.
- Today remember I am leaving at 1:30, and you are uploading your dailies to folder by 2:15, before you finish our day reading as normal. You will be working with Mrs. Fischer.
10:05 Attendance and Article
10:10 3rd Quarter SkillsUSA Game / Animation Design and Competition Kickoff
First we are going to introduce the two tracks. You are going to hear what the big picture idea is of each, and then you will select teams and get to work on whichever deliverable you choose.
What you choose today for team and focus will be what you work on Thursday and Friday mornings up to April vacation.
What you pick today with your team, you stay with, as everything is cumulative and building on the previous weeks.
Both of these tracks will have team-based, weekly deliverables, with a Thursday April 16th presentation of all work. Friday the 17th of vacation will be a recoup day. Then you start a week vacation.
Game Design Track / Mr. Cronin
If you and your team choose the Game Design track, you will take the next 9 weeks (Thursday and Friday AM’s) to develop a Video Game. We will follow the software development cycle and get through step 5 – we won’t be dealing with long term maintenance.
In your team you are going to really push yourself, learn new programming techniques (that you need for your specific game – maybe turbo boost for a driving game?), learn new artistic techniques (how about procedural levels?) Your team is it’s own little learning community – you are on your own to solve your own problems, use resources, use AI – whatever you need to do.
You and your team will be in charge of (not limited to):
- Coming up with a target demographic
- Deciding on a game type and main mechanic
- Creating a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) with gray box art
- Only after MVP creation and Alpha testing do you start making the real art. (Assume say Weeks 4-5 is our Art Start)
- Run through rounds of testing, get feedback, and integrate feedback into your game
- Be in charge of all promotional material for Game including:
- Trailers
- Websites
- UI / Lore
Your team of 2-3 will assign 1 member to be the Creative Director. For the rest of this project I only talk to the Creative Director about any questions. It is the Creative Director who will upload deliverables for 11:35 presentations on Friday.
Week 20 Game Design Deliverables
Part 1 – the “Game Design Document”.
Create a Google Document which will including the following sections:
- Game Studio Name
- Team Members and roles. Who is the Creative Director? Do you have a lead programmer? Do you have a lead artist?
- Type of Game you are going to create: Driving, Shooter, Platform, etc
- What is the main mechanic(s) of the game that we will be implementing? What do we have to DO to progress in the game? For example collecting was our main mechanic in our previous games.
- What is the art style that you are going to lean into? Low poly? Realistic? Black and white?
- What game engine?
In addition to the basics, I also want your team to create a SWOT analysis of your team, based on the information above. This will show up in in the GDD as well.
Based the answers to the first questions, I want you to create a SWOT analysis section that has 4 categories that your team will fill. Looking at the game you want to create, what are:
- The strengths of your team
- Great artists.
- Grades / proven track record.
- Have time to work in afternoons.
- etc.
- What is your team going to be GREAT at?
- The weaknesses of your team
- Do you have problems with work completetion?
- Are you going through a breakup?
- Are your parents getting a divorce?
- Never worked with each other.
- I have trouble focusing getting work done – just be honest, hold each other accountable.
- What is your team going to work AROUND?
- Opportunities
- Learn how to build an inventory system.
- Learn how to to build multiplayer games.
- Learn more about VR Game Development.
- Learn more about Mobile Game Development.
- Try this out before I spend $$$ at college to do similar work.
- What are you going to push yourself to learn more of?
- etc
- Threats
- Have you been known to miss a deadline?
- Do you think your idea is too big to get done?
- Are you planning on being out of school for a while?
- What could sabotage this project?
Part 2 – Mechanic Demonstration
Open up Unreal or Unity and create a very rough and basic demonstration of your mechanic. If a driving game around a mountain, setup a basic default car driving that can drive around a gray box. If an FPS shooting frisbees (think Tron) setup a basic default FPS that can shoot gray boxes.
If you can’t get your main mechanic working with Gray Boxes today, get it as far as you can by the deliverable to get as much partial credit as you can. Use OBS to demonstrate this.
Each Friday morning there will be a “skills” folder on the public, with a “game” folder inside. This is where your deliverables will go. By 11:35 on Friday, create a folder called gameStudioName and place a downloaded PDF of the Google Document, along with a OBS recording called “mainMechanic.mp4”. A total of 2 assets due by Friday at 11:35.
Mixer / Team Making / Tell Mr. Cronin / Get to work
After you have told Mr. Cronin your discipline and team members, you can get to work on the deliverable.
You will have Thursday and Friday AM’s for our Skills work, with 11:35 Friday having work copied down, and presented to the entire GAWD and GAWD2 group before lunch – as we are all working collaboratively in this room these mornings!
10:50 Morning Break (10 minutes)
11:00 3rd Quarter SkillsUSA Game / Animation Design and Competition Kickoff
11:40 1984
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) is a dystopian novel by George Orwell that explores totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and the manipulation of truth through the story of Winston Smith in the superstate of Oceania, ruled by the omnipresent Party and its figurehead, Big Brother.
Read along with Mr. Cronin. Improve literacy, word decoding, enjoy a nice story, and unplug from the world.
11:55 Lunch
- No food in the room / eat in the Cafe.
- You are welcome to return to the room when you have finished eating and work / hang out.
12:25 English
1:10 Afternoon Break
1:25 Afternoon Practice & Production
Portfolio V1
- folder called lastNamePortfolioV1
DH20: Contour Drawing and Observation Skills
- lastNameDH20.jpg
- lastNameDH20_ruleOfThirds.jpg
Week 20 Agency
- lastNameAgency_1.jpg through lastNameAgency_3.jpg
Skills work due tomorrow 11:35
2:15 Dailies (just turn in)
2:20 “19 Minutes”
Every day in GAWD will end with “19 Minutes” of silent reading. Closing down our day with silent reading provides many benefits:
- Improve Literacy Skills / Reading Stamina
- Create space for a small reading meditation where we can disconnect from the world and get lost in a story
- Unplug
At the end I will 3 students and ask for a 1 sentence explanation of what happened.
2:40 Dismissal
