CS 4803B
Electronic Game Programming

Winter 1998
Assignment 3
Due: March 18, 1998


For this assignment, you will create your own video game using the Motivate software. This project is worth 60% of your grade based on the final presentation, final report, and quality of the project. Teach a classmate to play it. Turn in the game and a brief manual for your game. Write an approximately 5 page final report explaining the decisions you made in designing your game, what you would have done differently if you had had more time, and what your trainee thought of the game. Give the origin of all the elements in your game (original, found on the web, borrowed from a friend, borrowed and then extensively modified, etc.). At least one skill and one behavior must have originated with you. Give a final presentation (approximately 10 minutes) and demo of your game during the final exam slot or an additional evening session.

Remember, there are only 4 weeks left in the quarter!! Designing and implementing a game is a LARGE project. We suggest that you design your game in a way that allows you to implement fully functional parts incrementally. Basically, you want to be able to show something even if you don't finish the game completely. You may want to implement only basic skills and supply stand-in skills (skills with very rough motion) that can be improved if time permits. The most important goal is that you implement a version that can be demoed. As an example, you may want to implement a single level of a multi-level first person shooter where the user can move and shoot and encounter monsters that can move, shoot, and die. Later, you may want to add in multiple weapons, elaborate dying sequences, health pieces, etc. A complete single level is far more important than multiple half-done levels.

We suggest that you use the supplied actors. Creating your own actors from scratch will be a time consuming process. Many of the supplied actors include several skills that may be useful in your games. We also suggest that you find pre-built models for the environment and any additional actors. There are several sites listed on the class web page. If you need to design your own models, keep them simple. We also encourage you to browse the examples that are supplied with Motivate. These examples contain useful ideas/code for your projects.

The example actors can be found in the ... /MotionFactory/Examples directory. This directory includes many characters (pirates, headless man, club kilowatt man and woman, laughing birdlike character, spider) and several rooms/terrain (island, brick floor). You can even use Moustafa and his wonderful Flubhouse....but keep in mind that Amy doesn't take too well to those beautiful decorative textures in the Flubhouse!

You may want to stick to game genres that are especially appropriate for Motivate such as first person shooters, fighting games and action games.

You will turn in your entire data directory (actors, components, images, piccolo, sounds, spaces) as well as the written portion described above. The games, papers, and presentation are due during the final exam period.