Class 3 Assignments and Retrospective

Assignments

Tutorial 2 – Sequential Scripting using Kismet.

Tutorial Two resources will be ready Sunday.

Get on it early, it’s harder. Mimic the tutorial. Show me you understand the tutorial by changing the Simon pattern. My pattern is:

Level 1: Blue
Level 2: Blue, Red
Level 3: Blue, Red, Yellow, Green

Sure the game is lame but it’s a good tutorial and you’ll be able to say you made your first game in a AAA game engine. Bonus, it is iOS compliant.

Assignment 2 – Pre-Production and Style.

Deliver One Concept Page. A Concept Page is little more than a single page questionnaire for a game designer. Building one is an exercise in seeing your true values for your product. What are the things that make your product what it is. Here you will find a concept page to download and complete. Build it. Do not just answer the questions. What I mean by build it is, consider each section carefully and make sure each section works together. It is all to easy to get off track.

Concept Sheet Template,  V. 1

This is the template for completing the second assignment.

Concept Page (6)

Deliver One Style Guide. A style guide is simple. Put together a two page spread that illustrates your look. You should be focused on shapes and pallets at this point and not specific art for the project. Found imagery from the net as well as drawings are all fine. I strongly suggest you start building a color story at this point. The term “Color Story” is a term the game industry totally stole from the fashion industry but it is a perfect description of what you should be focused on delivering. In this case a color story is just a series of colored squares that illustrate your primary color choices and their accents. These colors will denote how a user should navigate the UI as well as how they should feel when playing your experience.

These examples from the 25th Anniversary of Zelda Artbook do a good job of illustrating what we are after. While they are character-centric you can see that shape and palate are the goal for these spreads.

Deliver One Story Board. Build another that takes into consideration what you have written in the Concept Page and drawn from the Style Guide. This should be a more accurate representation of your gaming experience as well as be a stronger drawing.

The Tutorial Two scenes are done and posted but the video tutorial is not done yet. A nasty case of Bronchitis has made it difficult to record a demo that doesn’t sound atrocious.

Retrospective

1. Hardware – Chad is getting some demo cards installed for us to try.  The cards we have do the job well enough for out current tutorials and are not blocking.  The new cards will be half of the solution we need to be iOS ready.  We will also be installing a different version of UDK from last September that features better support for ATI graphics cards at the sacrifice of some features.

2a. TimLindsey.com is to slow.  The site currently ranks a 70/100 using Google’s site speed test.  I will be investigating and installing some site caching tools this weekend in hopes of making it better.  If the site is down from time to time trust it is because I am improving it.  Thanks for your patience.

2b.  TimLindsey.com is confusing.  I removed some of the fluff from the menu.  Mouse of Tutorials and Resources and you will 4 sub-sections.  They are just what you need; Class Notes and Assignments, Tutorials, Syllabus, & Schedule.  You have two forums to concern yourself with and that is it.  The first is the Class Notes forum – ask Design questions here.  The second is Tutorials – ask UDK questions here.  Straight forward?

3. Demo Videos – I will start adding some YouTube markers for chapters to them to help with navigation.  In addition to that I will begin saving them into the Tutorial # folder that is on the CADC network space for our class.

4. Fix permissions for students.  You will get an email from the site notifying you of account changes after I have made them.  The changes will allow you better access to your account information.

5. More face time.  Austin is going to make sure we have Skype loaded up and ready on the PC in our room at 1pm.  I will contact Chad about the use of a camera or at least a mic.  There will be no lecture.  These off weeks are just for you guys to ask anything you need.  Please take advantage and do not post-pone your work.

6. YouTube Channel Fixed?

-please register and try it out.

http://www.youtube.com/user/timmlindsey

7. More good/constructive critiques.  Will do.

8. Keep brainstorming.  Will do.

9. We like the class structure, we think?  I will create a more simple chart that shows how the 8 sprints deliver your best portfolio piece ever.  I will also be finalizing the Sprints section of the syllabus this weekend to reflect some organizational changes I have made.

Thanks everyone.

You guys reading this stuff?  You know I’m busting my butt here….