Deliverables

This page covers the general structure of what you are expected to deliver. Addition details can be found at the Documents page (DOCS).

Overview

This project is a team effort to design and build a serious game. The intent is that the design be quite complete. The level of implementation will differ by teams and will be agreed upon between the team and the instructor at the end of the second sprint. The objective of the game is defined by the client.

Key Dates

All dates are posted on the calendar.

Communication and Organization

The simplest way for teams to share work among themselves and with the instructors is to create a website. The final team deliverables MUST be available online and this is the required way to do it. The website need not be fancy. It is intended as a repository of information and versions of the deliverables. My recommendation is to use github.io. It is functional and you will be using github for other purposes.

Each team is to assign roles for team members. The key roles that need to identified are:

• client and instructor contacts: single point of contact for each of us. need not be the same person
• project manager: the person who makes sure that everyone knows what is due when and that the team is using their resources wisely and not duplicating effort
• game design architect: the person who is responsible for assuring consistency within the game
• software architect: the person who is responsible for assuring that the implementation structure is appropriate and that good development practices are being used
• editor: the person who is responsible for making sure that documentation is up to date, NOT for writing it all

Final Deliverables

Deliverables due at the end of the semester:

• Game Design document (team). The game design is intended to be as complete as possible and should be more comprehensive than what you are implementing. The goal is to document your vision for the game. See Serious Game Design Document Outline for a detailed description of the document.
• Software Design document (team). This document captures the actual code structure. It is the document that later developers will be able to maintain and update the code. See Software Design for a description of what is needed is given in If you need more detail, you can find a more general discussion on the General Software Design Document.
• Working game (team). This needs to include both an executable and the source code and assets.
• Trailer video (team). The best way to think of the required video is as a game trailer or advertisement. It should help the user understand what the purpose of the game is, how they would use it, and why they should. You can use any techniques that you want to deliver that message. The key requirement is that the video MUST include gameplay. If the game is short, you can include a full game, but that is clearly not necessary. Expected run-time is around 2 minutes.
• Team and Project Evaluation (individual). This is due at 7 pm on the day of gamefest. This is an individual evaluation of how the team project worked. The goal is for you to reflect on what you have learned about building a serious game and what you have learned about working as a team.

  Each student is to email their evaluations. Evaluations can be in the form of a document or an email. These are confidential evaluations and will not be shared with your team mates. Evaluations are not optional. Once they are past due, I will send incessant bug notes; I will not assign a grade to anyone not turning in an evaluation.

  The evaluation is to include the following:

  1. Overall team evaluation. How did the team work as a whole? What worked well and what didn't? How was the work divided? Did the division work well?
  2. Individual assessments of each team member, including yourself. The assessment should cover
     • technical ability
     • technical contribution
     • organizational skill
     • team participation
     This should include both a narrative and numeric evaluation. You are to assign a numeric value between 1 and 5 to each individual on each of these four categories. (1 is best and 5 is worst.) The narrative should justify the ranking and address the following points:
     • Describe what tasks were assigned to the person and how they executed those assignments.
     • Did they help others?
     • Did they contribute?
     • Did they need a lot of guidance or were they self-starting?
  3. Finally, you are to allocate $10,000 across the team based on contribution. You must allocate all of the money. This assignment helps me calibrate your evaluation.

All of the team deliverables will be linked from the first page of the team website. The links are are to be specifically called

• Game Design Document
• Software Design Document
• Game
• Repository
• Video

Teams will share their games at the gamefest during the final exam period.