Assignment 2: Design Document for Game 2: Due Monday of week 11 @ 23:59:59
Updates (please check daily)
- Late penalty: The maximum mark that you can get is determined by your submission
date:
- Oct 10: 10
- Oct 11: 9
- Oct 12 8
- Oct 13: 7
- Oct 14: 6
No submissions will be accepted after Oct 14.
As an example, if the maximum mark you can get is 8 and you score 7,
then there is no penalty. If you score 9, then your mark will be
reduced to 8.
- Sept 20: There is now a forum for assignment 2 discussion. Please be sure to read my posts there. They are part of the assignment 2 specification. Feel free to ask questions in this forum. If you ask questions by email to me (amichail@gmail.com), then I will likely answer your questions in the forum.
Your second game will be a real-time strategy (RTS) game of your
choosing. You can incorporate RPG elements into your RTS game if you like
(e.g., by allowing the player to focus on character development of
hero units; see warcraft 3).
Assignment 2 (worth 10%) asks you to write a design document
for your second game (worth 30%).
It is acceptable for your game to diverge a bit from this design document. However,
major changes will require permission.
Before starting your design document, do at least the following:
In addition, I am maintaining a collection of game related URLs on del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/amichail/games. You might find some of these URLs helpful. You can also use the CollaborativeRank search engine for del.icio.us (e.g., try searching for rts), although its index is not complete: http://collabrank.org.
The design document will be marked as follows:
- [5 marks] Design Document Writeup (see the lecture notes on design documents and the sample design documents mentioned above): You are required to follow the format described in the design document lecture notes and include all of the following sections: Table of Contents, Introduction/Overview,
Game Mechanics, Artificial Intelligence,
Game Elements, Story Overview (yes, your game must have a story), Game Progression,
System Menus
- [2.5 marks] Real-Time Strategy Game Considerations (e.g., a compelling mix of conquest, exploration, and trade (and possibly also RPG elements if you like); see the lecture notes on strategy games and the real-time strategy game demos)
- [2.5 marks] More General Game Considerations (e.g., interesting goals, interesting decisions, balance, rewards, flow, presence, immersion, etc.; see the document on game design mentioned above)
Although we expect you to build a real-time strategy game that is similar in many ways to existing RTS games such as StarCraft, we would still like to see (and we will reward) creativity in your game proposal. A simple clone of StarCraft (or some other existing game) will not impress us!
Also, you will be required to write an AI section in your design document as described above. This section must explain how you would build a computer opponent using AI techniques. Feel free to do some research on game AI. For the actual game (assignment 3), you may avoid the opponent AI (which is hard to do) by providing multiplayer instead.
Assignment 2 is due Monday of week 11 @ 23:59:59. Again, you will be required to explain the contributions of each member of your group.