Basically, we are split up into teams of four (typically two designers, one programmer, and one artist). We are all functioning as if we are small game studios. We are pretty independent of a normal class structure. Each class session is spent either discussing our ideas and progress of the week and getting critique from everyone else, or...
"Challenging."
Here's the deal: there are four "stages" each team must pass to even be able to be considered to move onto the second semester with their game. Each stage has its own set criteria that must be filled to move on to the next one.
"Challenging" a stage means putting a long presentation together with your team and presenting what you've done and why you deserve to move on. Why should the school fund your game over someone else's?
By the way, "funding" a game means giving more students to your team. There is no actual money involved. Unfortunately.
Where is my team at right now you ask?
We're hoping to challenge this upcoming Tuesday. [Shakes in her flip flops.]
A lot of work on the presentation starts tonight. We've got to finish and polish all tasks required for this stage, make sure all of us know the games forwards and backwards, put together the presentation, and practice the presentation. Each of us need to be able to answer any question thrown at us.
Also -- even more daunting -- is the task of... picking a game. We have to pick which game out of our prototypes we're deciding to move forward on.
You might be like, "Psh, no big deal which game do you like better?"
I don't blame you for thinking that's how it works. But it totally doesn't work that way.
It doesn't matter which game I want to play. It matters what the rest of the world wants to play. Furthermore, it doesn't matter what I want to play. It matters what game I want to make. The two are very different. "Tightening the graphics on level three" is a lot more difficult than it sounds.
This is totally what game design is like.
Even then, I (personally) am still 50/50. Each require a very different set of artistic skills and assets. It's just a matter of "which art-heavy game am I going to pick?"
Wingsuit has a LOT more environmental assets to do. I mean a ton. Imagine standing on top of a mountain and looking out at the landscape. Try to think of every unique item you're looking at. Now imagine that you have to model all of them in 3D, texture them, and then someone has to go in and put every individual item in the level. I don't even want to think about it.
Mageball has less environmental assets, but there are characters and spells. Characters are extremely hard to model. They also need an enormous amount of animation, and spells need awesome effects and animations. Now, I'm no good at either of those things. In fact, I'm not even designated animator for this semester (Chris is). Particle effects and spell animations are something I can learn, but it is going to be hard.
There are also a million other things to consider that are game design, game programming, and marketability related. If you want to read about that in depth, I'm sorry but you'll have to go elsewhere.
We've got to decide on a game in a couple of hours and, right now, I really couldn't tell you what direction we're leaning in.
But next post will! Stay tuned.
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