CSS 290- Assignment 3 ( a.k.a. A3)

DUE DATE: Tuesday, April 22

C# Review; A Critically Analyzed GameMaker Game!

 

           

            You are not allowed to work in groups this assignment.  For this assignment, you should start, finish, and do all the work on your own.  If you have questions, please contact the instructor.

 

 

Learning Objectives:
(This is a list of the major topics that you, as students, will learn in this assignment:)

  1. Demonstrate mastery of the technical topics that we've covered since the last assignment.
    While the form of your game is up to you, you will be required to incorporate certain elements, so that you can demonstrate technical mastery of the material.
     
  2. Creating Your Own Game, With GameMaker
    The game will be completely up to you (within reason). Goals for this assignment include you critically analyzing your game, and you striving for creativity (as measured by this new game being different from the games you created for the previous assignment)

For this assignment, you will:
Create a your own game, AND

Fill in the Game Summary Document AND  use the Game Evaluation Rubric to guide your thinking about how to improve your game. 

 

In order to demonstrate mastery of the material that we've covered in class, your game must have:

  1. multiple levels (multiple rooms)
    It must have at least 3 actual levels of gameplay
     

  2. A starter screen, which displays the title, and allows the user to start the game whenever the player presses a key
     

  3. An 'end of game' screen, which congratulates the player when the game is over
     

  4. At least two conditional statements - in GameMaker, these are Check ____, or Test _______ actions.

Other than that, you can do (almost) anything you want.  Some general rules that your game must follow:

  1. You need to use GameMaker7, and it needs to be something you can upload to the StudentTracker system (currently, there's a limit of 10MB per file, so putting more than 1 (shortish) .mp3 into your game will probably be too much).  Feel free to do whatever you want, keeping in mind the following constraints on your game:
     

  2. It has to be done by the time this assignment is due
    So - go crazy, but keep an eye on the clock.  You can always go back & put in more time on this later, if you want
     

  3. It has to pass the 'parent test'
    No obscenity, bad language, questionable content, etc, etc.  Imagine that your game is going to be shown to your parents - would you be proud to show it to them?
     

  4. It has to use resources (images, sounds) responsibly
    Feel free to download stuff from the web, but make sure that you are legally allowed to use it in your game.

  5. It must be substantially different from the games you have previously submitted for Assignments #1 and #2
    This requirement is here in order to help ensure/force 'creativity' - it's good to try out new game concepts, and this will help reduce the potential for duplication between homework assignments.

    The other thing that you need to do for this part of the assignment is to fill in the Game Summary Document, so that briefly describes your game.  This includes the table details where you got your resources from.  Use Microsoft Word (or a text file, if you want), and keep it most of the standard settings.  Make sure that the document is SINGLE-SPACED (in Word 2007, you will need to set the style for the document by doing a Select-All (Control-A), then clicking on the Normal (No Space) style. 

    You must fill in the Game Description table.  Once you've done that, you should use the Game Evaluation Rubric to go through, and critically consider each aspect of the game.  See if there's anything you can do to improve each aspect, and then revise both the game, and the description.

    You must also list out the resources that you use in your game in the Resource Usage Justification table.  Each image, each background image, each sound, everything.  For each resource, include the URL to directly download the resource, and a quick (2-3 sentence) explanation about why you know that you're allowed to use the resource in question.  For example: if there's a page on the website that says anyone can use the website's images for non-commercial use, then you should say something like "At < URL >, it clearly indicates that anyone who wants to can make use of the images from the website, for non-commercial use.  My game is a homework assignment (that I will not sell), therefore putting these images in my game is non-commercial use".

 

Group Work, Commenting:

 

            You are not allowed to work in groups for this assignment.  You should start, finish, and do all the work on your own.  If you have questions, please contact the instructor.

 

What to turn in:

 

·        A single electronic folder (a directory).  This folder should contain:

o     The Game_Summary.DOC file, with your name at the top

o       The .GMK file that contains your game

 

How to electronically submit your homework:

Instructions to do this will be given in-class on the date that this assignment is due.