Project Teams

Project teams should have 4-5 members. Significant project work and demos will be conducted in lab. Hence, lab attendance is required. Team members should be in the same lab section to facilitate collaboration.

Project Deliverables

Team Information. During Lab 1, students should form project teams. The TAs may assign students who have not joined a group to a new or existing group. By the end of Lab 1, each team should submit the team information form via ilearn. This will include team name, team members and emails, brief project description, presentation topic, and communication channel (Slack, or Google Hangouts).

Features/Proposal. At the end of Week 2, the team will submit the following:

A brief overview of the project. A game project should include a the game narrative here.
The team scrum spreadsheet. At this stage, it should contain a list of features that the project will implement. A feature centers around a user story, has a clear set of acceptance criteria, and can be demoed. This is the group's vision for the project they want to deliver at the end of the quarter. The team should distribute 100 story points among the separate features. Story points reflect the estimated relative effort required for that feature. If a feature is too large (can't be completed within one demo cycle), break it down into smaller features.

Demos. There will be three in-lab demos, week 5 (~30 story points), week 8 (~70 story points), and week 10 (~100 story points). The grades will be determined based on the features demonstrated and the amount of work completed as indicated in the weekly spreadsheet submission.

Weekly spreadsheet submission. Starting in Week 3, each team should submit the current version of their scrum spreadsheet by the beginning of their lab section. This will show the state of the spreadsheet at the end of prior week's sprint. The burndown chart should be updated to reflect work accomplished.

Individual Contribution. Assessment of individual contribution will be based on three factors: task allocation as indicated in the spreadsheet throughout the quarter, individual self-assessment of contribution, and team assessment of each individual's contributions.

Report. The report should be ~3-5 pages (not including pictures) and should include the following items:

Overview
Game Description (e.g., levels, characters, game play)
Implementation (e.g., game engine, scripts, algorithms, tools)
Project Post Mortem
- What tasks were accomplished?
- What planned tasks were not done?
- How did scrum work for you?
- What would you do differently?

Video. A ~30s video of your game being played. We may put the videos on the class website and credit all of the team members by name. Let us know if you do not wish to have your video on the class website, or if you want the video included with different attribution or anonymously.

Project Topics

You may choose among the following project topics (other proposed topics may also be considered by the instructors):

Game. Design and develop a novel 2D or 3D computer game. You game should have an original narrative. You have a lot of freedom in designing your games. You may also make use of freely available game assets, music, etc., as long as they are used strictly in accordance with their license requirements and copyright, and are properly attributed. Each asset (original or licensed) must be clearly documented in the project spreadsheet.

Rendering. Implement advanced state-of-the-art rendering techniques to create a sequence of final, high-quality rendered images, or an animation.

Simulation. Design and develop a system for physics-based simulation of rigid bodies, soft bodies, or fluids.