Game Design

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Game Design

• By Michele Fisher

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A Brief History

• Computer games started in the 1960s
• Earliest games were developed by hobbyist on the
  university mainframes.
• Original content vs pre-existing content
• IPRH Intellectual Property Rights Holder

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Introduction

• What is Game Design?
• The purpose of the game design process is
  essentially to direct the creation of a game
  given a set of constraints. These constraints
  vary depending on the type of game being
  designed. (Wikipedia, 2006)
• Game design forces you to think about all aspects
  of your game in detail.

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What should we consider is designing a game?

• Technical Design Document
• Creative Design Document
• Project Management
• Development Team
• Production Design
• Art Design
• Programming Design
• Audio Design
• Quality Assurance

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Platform Considerations?

• Arcade machines
• PC
• Consoles
• Nintendo
• X-Box
• Playstation
• Handheld Portables

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Game Genres?

• Real-time Strategy (RTS)
• Role Playing Games
• Sports
• Puzzlers
• 1st Person and 3rd Person Shooters

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Design Documents

• Technical Design Document
• Summary of the project
• Staff assignments and considerations
• Listing of core code modules required

• Creative Design Document
• Back-story for the game
• Basic character navigation features
• Outline of inventory system

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Project Planning

• Tasking making assignments according to who
  will execute which task.
• Tracking Charting the progress (or lack of
  progress) for any given task.
• Example of planning tools
• MS Project
• NXN Alienbrain

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Key Roles

• Developer
• Publisher
• Producer
• Designers
• Programmers
• Audio Programmers
• Game Testers

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Art and Design

• Modeling building art assets including
  character models and props
• Animation focus is on animating character
  motions and environment in 2D or 3D
• Mapping focus is on creating texture maps to
  apply to geometric surfaces including character
  models and environments

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Audio

• Composers write background music, opening and
  closing music, and cutscene music for game
  scenarios and cinematics
• Suspense or climatic music
• Special FX the kicks, crunches, booms, and bangs

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Quality Assurance

• Testers perform critical debugging tasks by
  playing through games looking for the following
• Gameplay problems
• Freezes
• Misspelled text
• Inconsistencies
• Missing or confusing features

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Summary

• In review, we have discussed
• A brief history of gaming
• The purpose of game design
• Some game design considerations
• Design Documents
• Project Planning and key roles
• Art Design and Audio
• QA

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Any Questions???
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