Study Guide

Objective

After completing the course, the student will be able to:
- Understand the roles in a game development team
- Utilize the most common game development tools and industry standards
- Understand various game development platforms
- Understand the game design process
- Utilize agile game development methods

Content

- The roles in the game development team
- Introduction of agile methods suitable for game development
- Game content creation
- Game programming
- Contemporary game development tools and game platforms
- Financing and publishing channels of the game industry

Materials

Due to the practical nature of this course, there is no prescribed learning material. All necessary documentation and other material toward the successful completion of the project course on game development will be shared with students throughout the course.

The learning platform UTU Moodle https://bit.ly/pcgd2023

Teaching methods

Weekly Friday morning meetings:
onsite meetings in ICT City
each team presents shortly the current status of their project
preferably with a workable and playable demo
each answers briefly the following three questions:
1. Have you achieved the previous goal?
2. What are you going to do next?
3. Is there something preventing you from doing it?

Weekly Friday Laboratory Meetings in ICT City C3031
Friday afternoon meeting will cover the week topic for game development as project and team work. Each team and member will plan and share the upcoming week task

The course will be delivered through close contact and practical Game Lab work. Peer-assisted learning is required throughout the course.

The course material, assignments and direct instructions will be shared through UTU Moodle..

Online tuition will be conducted with Zoom and UTU Moodle workspace https://bit.ly/pcgd2023

Exam schedules

There are no exams for this course.

This course does not have any retake possibilities. Failing the course means that students will have to repeat it the following year.

International connections

This course leans on CDIO principles and takes a project-based learning approach.

Completion alternatives

Experience in published game project in a company. Contact the instructor.

Student workload

Close contact meetings 51h
Team based project work 84h

Content scheduling

Week 2
Grouping and ideas
Week 3
Pitching the idea
Week 4
Game mechanics working
Week 5
Game assets implemented
Week 6
Version that can be tested internally by the group
Week 7
Version that can be tested with friends and family
Week 8
Work on your game project
Week 9
Playable version that can be shown to strangers
Week 10
ICT Showroom event (Thu)
Post production and publishing, ICT Showroom event experiences
Week 11
Course wrap up

Further information

Passing this course is a pre-requisite for continuing with 3th-year studies – no exceptions will be made.

Pre-requisite for this course is passed grading of Game Development Essentials, Introduction to Game Development Tools and Object Oriented Programming

Evaluation scale

H-5

Assessment methods and criteria

The course has weekly meetings:
On Friday morning meetings one member of the group must present the weekly goal of the group and review the progress.
On Friday afternoon meetings are based both on individual and group work at Gamelab.
Each student will be evaluated independently based on group work, active participation and progress and peer evaluation
The participation will form a factor for the whole grade: attendance percentage x final grade

Assessment criteria, fail (0)

Failure to participate weekly meetings and to submit the game project as a group
Individual non-participation as determined by attendance and the peer-evaluation will also lead to failing the course.

Assessment criteria, satisfactory (1-2)

- The weekly progress is weak
- Deliverable is done on hasty manner
- Deliverable contains a few features
- Deliverable is incoherent or does not work

Assessment criteria, good (3-4)

- The weekly progress is good
- Deliverable contains many features
- Adequately applied preliminary research to complete the project, but lacking creativity
- Deliverable is coherent and functions as required

Assessment criteria, excellent (5)

- The weekly progress is excellent
- Deliverable contains lots of features
- Creatively applied preliminary research to complete the assignment
- Deliverable is coherent and the quality is superb