Hello Mr. Gregory,
I"m currently a grad student at Appalachian State University and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions. This fall six graduate students seeking their Masters in Computer Science (including me) will be taking an independent study on what we are calling The Design and Implementation of Game Making. I'm contacting you because we decided to use your Game Engine Architecture book as our semester's text book. We are planning on using the new Unreal Development Kit that is out now.
All of the students taking this class have had 4+ years of programming experience though none have done anything with Game Development. We made up the class with the goal of getting a basic understanding of the game making process (from storyboard to actually playing something) and we wanted to learn this cool new Unreal Kit while we were at it. By the end of the semester we would like to actually have a functioning game though it may not be the prettiest thing you've ever seen. Also we were wanting to get a feel for the team aspect of game making. In all our courses so far we've never worked in a team larger than 2 so a team of 6 sounds kind of exciting to me. It would be great if we could have a real team where someone was a "specialist" at one aspect of the game making process, like 3d rendering or gameplay logic, but as of now no one is a specialist at anything. We're all newbies when it comes to game making, though I'm sure we've all wasted many hours playing them.
So I guess my question is, Do you have any suggestions or advice on where or how we should start? I've looked over your syllabi on your site already. Could we condense that into one semester somehow? Or are we reaching too high? I just want to know if you have any pointers on how we should go about this.
Thanks!
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Hi Jeremy,
I'm very pleased to hear that you're considering using my book as your course text. Your plan of having the students build a game using the UDK is a great one, similar in many respects to what I did in my course.
A 6-person team shouldn't be too hard to manage. (I've done this kind of project with as many as 20 students...) That said, I always liked making sub-teams of no more than 2 or 3 people. (I recall my days as a student -- it was almost impossible to get 4 or more people to agree on a time and place to meet to work on our projects!) So you'd be best off dividing the work into three major categories with sub-teams of 2 each. Perhaps one team could focus on the player mechanics and camera, one team on enemies/AI, and the third on level design/layout and visuals. Or whatever makes sense for your specific project.
I'd also recommend approaching your design like the layers of an onion. Focus on the most basic, core and crucial functionality first. If and only if you make good progress on that, then proceed to the next layer of polish and less-important features, and so on. That way, by the end of the semester, you'll have the highest chance of arriving at something that actually works and has all the core features you need. (At Naughty Dog, we're big on getting something functional, but not pretty, up on screen as quickly as possible. This keeps us focused on what's important, and informs us of what is and is not working as early in the process as possible.)
Best luck, and do keep me posted on how it goes.
I'm very pleased to hear that you're considering using my book as your course text. Your plan of having the students build a game using the UDK is a great one, similar in many respects to what I did in my course.
A 6-person team shouldn't be too hard to manage. (I've done this kind of project with as many as 20 students...) That said, I always liked making sub-teams of no more than 2 or 3 people. (I recall my days as a student -- it was almost impossible to get 4 or more people to agree on a time and place to meet to work on our projects!) So you'd be best off dividing the work into three major categories with sub-teams of 2 each. Perhaps one team could focus on the player mechanics and camera, one team on enemies/AI, and the third on level design/layout and visuals. Or whatever makes sense for your specific project.
I'd also recommend approaching your design like the layers of an onion. Focus on the most basic, core and crucial functionality first. If and only if you make good progress on that, then proceed to the next layer of polish and less-important features, and so on. That way, by the end of the semester, you'll have the highest chance of arriving at something that actually works and has all the core features you need. (At Naughty Dog, we're big on getting something functional, but not pretty, up on screen as quickly as possible. This keeps us focused on what's important, and informs us of what is and is not working as early in the process as possible.)
Best luck, and do keep me posted on how it goes.
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