Course syllabus

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DAT510 / DIT414 DAT510 / DIT414 Design and construction of digital games lp3 VT25 (7.5 hp)

Course is offered by the department of Computer Science and Engineering

Zoom Meeting Room Link

https://chalmers.zoom.us/my/paulinebelfordsmeetingroom 
NOTE: We do not intend to hold any classes via Zoom. This link is here in case any students need to join a mandatory supervision meeting via Zoom, for example.

Discord Server

You are encouraged to join the design-and-construction-of-digital-games channel on the N2GDT Discord server. You can use this channel to find group members, and to discuss various things related to the course. Note that the invite is to the entire server, which has many channels. The design-and-construction-of-digital-games channel can be found under the Courses subheading. You are welcome to use the other channels such as general, show_and_tell, etc but are not required to do so. The Discord server is moderated, so be mindful of what is posted there. The link is: https://discord.gg/fYwg3YQEKN  

Supervision Meetings Schedule

The intention is that supervision meetings will be in the Friday slots. We plan to try to use the group meeting rooms on the 3rd and 4th floor of SB3 nearest the labs. If groups need to reschedule a meeting then they will need to book a group meeting room for that purpose.

The supervisor allocations (which groups have which supervisors, and meeting dates (but not times)) can be found here. This is listed alphabetically by group name so you can find which supervisor you have been allocated: SupervisionAllocations.docx

 

Supervision Meetings Schedule can be found here. Please check this before each meeting as it may be updated for later meetings: Supervision Meetings Schedule.docx

Unity Version

This course makes use of Unity. The version we are using is 6000.0.58f2 LTS. There is a word document published in Module 2 which shows where to find this and how to install it on your personal computers. Please use this version if possible. This is the version which we have requested to have installed in the computer labs. If you use a later version of Unity 6, please note that it is not backwards compatible, so anything you do at home may not work on an earlier version in the labs.

Teaching Team and Contact details

Course purpose

Game development has become an important part of the modern digital economy. The industry is huge, diverse, and complicated. This course will provide a grounding in design, development and evaluation with the intention of giving students the necessary framework to create playable prototype games of their own.

Course literature

There is no required literature for this course.  All required materials are provided during lectures and exercises. There is suggested "literature" in the form of a Ludography which suggests some games to play or learn about.

Course Timetable

The course timetable is available in the calendar and in the summary below.  Where there is a disagreement between TimeEdit and this page, this page is the one you should pay attention to.  TimeEdit is a room booking system, not a scheduling system.

Student Representatives and Course Evaluation

These are the (randomly-selected) student representatives for this course:

Chalmers

Yuxi Guo (Chloe) gggchloe1010@gmail.com

Filip Larsen filiplarsen231@gmail.com 

Hang Wan legolaswandd@gmail.com 

GU

TBA

 

Please email me to volunteer as a course rep from GU.

Voluntary representatives can be added on request. We always seek to get at least a couple of representatives from GU, as it is only Chalmers who sends a list of representatives.

Changes made since the last occasion

  • The course has been moved to Johanneberg campus
    • This is in response to student feedback, and also because the course is primarily for students on TKITE which is based at Johanneberg campus
  • The course has been moved to Block C of the Chalmers block schedule.
    • This was partly to move it into the block schedule to reduce the number of clashes with other courses (it previously straddled two blocks) but also partly based on room booking constraints. This block in Mondays 13 - 17, Thursdays 08 - 12 and Fridays 15 - 17.
  • The course has been updated to Unity 6
    • It was not possible to update to Unity 6 last year as it was too recent and there are lead-in times. There is a small possibility that the requested version of Unity will not be installed in the labs in time. The vast majority of students do use laptops, but if Unity 6 proves too intensive to run on your laptop and it is not available in the labs then this is something you should discuss with the Examiner and we will try to find a suitable solution.
  • The lecture slots have been reduced from 3 hours to 2 hours and are now twice per week for the first four weeks of the course.
    • The change from 3 to 2 hours was due to this being reported as the normal length for bachelors level courses (many masters courses have 3 hour or occasionally 4 hour lecture slots). 
    • The change to two lectures per week is in response to the lectures covering some content after it is optimal if done at 1 lecture per week pace (i.e. it is better to front-load the lectures so there is more time to work on the project earlier in the course).
  • Overall, there are more hours allocated to practical sessions due to the change in the hours allocated to lectures.

Learning objectives and syllabus

Learning objectives:

Knowledge and understanding

  • Identify game accessibility issues and incorporate solutions
  • Document a game design against budgetary and time constraints
  • Identify an audience for which to design a game

Skills and abilities

  • Design an experiential framework for a game
  • Make use of standard game design frameworks
  • Incorporate game assets
  • Make effective use of game development frameworks
  • Develop effective prototypes of a game design

Judgement ability and approach

  • Effectively define success criteria against which a game should be assessed
  • Analyze playability tests conducted with actual users
  • Iteratively evaluate game goals against user feedback

Chalmers Syllabus

GU Syllabus

Examination form

This course is divided into three successive parts. These parts cover design, construction and evaluation of games. The largest part will be given to game development in Unity.

The first part is about the topic of game design. It will cover requirements gathering and specification: what do you want a game to do; for whom are you designing a game; and what does success look like? Students on this course will develop the design documentation for their own game as a deliverable for the first part.

The second part will take that design documentation and turn it into an prototype. A playable demo of a game design is produced here.

The third part takes the prototype created in the previous part and focuses on playtesting. This will include ensuring accessibility for an audience that includes disabled gamers. Together those are the deliverable for the final part of the course.

Each part will also introduce theoretical concepts through lectures, academic papers, books, and professional literature.

Course summary:

Course Summary
Date Details Due