CSE1GDTGame Design

Theory

2009 – Paul Taylor

Game Development

• Games have 3 Main Inputs of effort– Engineering– Art– Design

• Having all 3 is essential to building a game– That doesn’t mean you need to provide all 3

yourself

Development Team Roles

– Management– Design– Art– Programming– Audio– Other Roles

• Admin, organisation, etc

Baisc Level Design

• Why does a level need to be designed?

• What is a bad design?

• Why does a programmer need to know this?

Basic Elements

• A Concept• An Environment• A Beginning• At least one Goal• At least one Challenge• An End (or more)• Reward (s)• Failure Plan (s)

Combining some Basic Elements

Game Design Tools For Us• XNA

– Prototyping– Development

• Photoshop / GIMP 2.x– Textures– Sprites– Interface Text

• Paper– Design– Ideas– Concepts

Core Elements / Mechanics

• What is needed to make the game?

• What would destroy the game if it were removed?

Tomb Raider The Game

Tomb Raider The Board Game

The Book of Lenses

• Lens #1 Page 21 theAofGD

• What experience do I want the player to have?

• What is essential to that experience?

• How can my game capture that essence?

Agile Development

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on

the right, we value the items on the left more.

The specifics of Agile Development

• http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

In effect our goals are:

Trusting People to do their job

Being flexible to changes required

Delivering working projects at every iteration of the development

Solid, not excessive documentation

Game Design Competition

http://gamecareerguide.com/features/763/game_design_challenge_rebooting_.php

Due by next Tuesday

• Less than 500 words – easy!

• BCC my email address on your submission

• Include your full name, and affiliation to Game Design Theory – La Trobe University

The Assignment Format

• Week 1 is THIS week

• At the end of Week 12 you will submit your final development of the projects.

• 11 Weeks and 3 days left..... Tick Tock!

The Assignment

• Autism - The Game– This is a game that is meant to educate non-

autistic people on how the world can be perceived by a person with Autism

– Many Texts and Videos have covered Autism, but with the immersion of gaming we can create an experience for players, as opposed to just reading about the condition

• As a team you will be developing the game as you decide best.

• We will help you out along the way, with any issues you have

• By the end I expect we will have many different games, each very different from the others

Assignment Storage

• Live Mesh

• Each Team will have an account

• Each Team member will gain access to the account with both their own storage (read-only to other team members) and shared storage (editable by all team members)

Week 1 Goals

• Write a submission for the gamecareerguide.com competition

• Get together into a group.

• Select one of the Game Development Projects

• Start writing up your own page of ideas for your game development.

• Learn to use Live Mesh for file sharing

Week 2

- Take the ideas from all of your team and create a single document containing the final ideas for your team.

- Scale the design you create to fit within a 12 week timeframe.

- Learn the basics of XNA Development

Week 3

• Write the first revision of the Game Design Document

• As a team you will each need to write a section, then when it is all finished, each read over the document and write down any concerns / issues you have

• Continue learning XNA• Create the Class Hierarchy and User Flow

for the game

Week 4

• Prototyping Stage 1– Implement the Basic Classes– The User Interface shell– Start building and reviewing the game

mechanics

Week 5

• Prototyping Stage 2– Continue development of your prototype to

include everything you must test to build the game

Week 6

• Review your prototypes and decide on your development goals

• Create a new set of documents containing all the amendments / changes needed

Week 7

• Development Cycle 1– Start building your Game

Week 8

• Second half of the Development Cycle 1

Week 9

• Last Game Review before the Final Development Cycle

• You need to identify everything that works, doesn’t, and all the in-betweens

Week 10

• The start of your final Development Cycle

Week 11

• This should be the end of your final development phase

Week 12

• Final Polishing and Collation of Materials

• Final Testing

• Bug Fixing

• Write a short review on the development process and the final quality of your game

Guest Lecturer

• The next 3 weeks will be given to you by Simon Joslin, of the Voxel Agents.

• After Simon, we will continue our study of Games Design and Development

• I’ll still see you all in the Tutorials and Labs

Things you NEED to do

• Create your teams• Send me all of the team email addresses

– You also need to have your email registered with windows live (aka hotmail addresses or sign your address up at live.com)

– Use your live account to create a mesh.com account

• Submit a entry to the gcg competition and bcc me when you do! (It is part of your subject mark!)

References

• Game Design and Develoment, E. Adams & A. Rollings, 2007, Pearson Printice Hall

• Game Level Design, Ed Byrne, 2005, Charles River Media

• http://agilemanifesto.org/

• The Art of Game Design