This document provides an overview of eAdventure, an open-source game authoring tool. It describes how to create scenes, connect scenes, add characters, write dialogues, create objects, define actions and conditions. It also explains how to test and publish games created with eAdventure. Additional learning materials including tutorial videos are referenced to help users learn how to use the different features of the editor.
This document outlines the key design documents needed to plan a computer game, including a game concept document to outline the main ideas, a game treatment document to provide an overview like a website, a character design document to define characters, a game world design document to design the game environment, a flowboard to map the game flow, a game script to specify rules and mechanics, and a game specification to fully define the game.
This document discusses business models and marketing strategies for monetizing and promoting computer games. It outlines several business models like premium, freemium with in-app purchases or ads, and pay-to-win models. It also discusses good monetization techniques like time-limited offers and social features versus bad techniques like paywalls or forcing payments. The document then covers key aspects of developing a marketing strategy including defining the product, audience, platforms, budget, and channels. Popular channels mentioned are websites, app stores, advertising, reviews sites, and social media.
This document discusses paper and digital prototyping for game design. It describes elements used in paper prototyping like screen templates, characters, and controls. It explains that a prototype feedback session introduces the goal, simulates interactivity between a facilitator and test person, and gets feedback through questions and notes. Finally, it mentions some software tools that can be used for paper or digital prototyping and assigns a mission for all teams to craft a game prototype.
This document discusses principles and considerations for user interface design in computer games. It covers defining gameplay modes and screen layout, selecting visual and audio elements, and input devices. The key aspects of UI design discussed are consistent style, immediate feedback, limiting steps for actions, grouping controls, and minimizing physical stress on the player. Gameplay modes, camera models, interaction models, and navigation mechanisms are also addressed.
This document discusses level design for computer games. It covers the nature of level design, including the space, initial conditions, challenges, and aesthetics. It also discusses universal level design principles such as tutorial levels, varying progression, rewarding players, and punishing less. Genre-specific principles for different game types are also outlined. Common level layouts including linear, parallel, ring, network, hub-and-spoke, and combined are defined. Finally, the level design process from planning to testing is summarized.
This document discusses concepts and processes for interactive storytelling and designing narratives for computer games. It covers objectives of storytelling like entertainment and selling games. It also distinguishes between narrative and gameplay, and discusses different narrative formats, the story writing process, structures like linear and branching stories, and using dialogues. The key points are that interactive stories let players choose or cause events, and good game narratives balance player control and pre-written cutscenes to create tension and guide the story.
This document provides an overview of eAdventure, an open-source game authoring tool. It describes how to create scenes, connect scenes, add characters, write dialogues, create objects, define actions and conditions. It also explains how to test and publish games created with eAdventure. Additional learning materials including tutorial videos are referenced to help users learn how to use the different features of the editor.
This document outlines the key design documents needed to plan a computer game, including a game concept document to outline the main ideas, a game treatment document to provide an overview like a website, a character design document to define characters, a game world design document to design the game environment, a flowboard to map the game flow, a game script to specify rules and mechanics, and a game specification to fully define the game.
This document discusses business models and marketing strategies for monetizing and promoting computer games. It outlines several business models like premium, freemium with in-app purchases or ads, and pay-to-win models. It also discusses good monetization techniques like time-limited offers and social features versus bad techniques like paywalls or forcing payments. The document then covers key aspects of developing a marketing strategy including defining the product, audience, platforms, budget, and channels. Popular channels mentioned are websites, app stores, advertising, reviews sites, and social media.
This document discusses paper and digital prototyping for game design. It describes elements used in paper prototyping like screen templates, characters, and controls. It explains that a prototype feedback session introduces the goal, simulates interactivity between a facilitator and test person, and gets feedback through questions and notes. Finally, it mentions some software tools that can be used for paper or digital prototyping and assigns a mission for all teams to craft a game prototype.
This document discusses principles and considerations for user interface design in computer games. It covers defining gameplay modes and screen layout, selecting visual and audio elements, and input devices. The key aspects of UI design discussed are consistent style, immediate feedback, limiting steps for actions, grouping controls, and minimizing physical stress on the player. Gameplay modes, camera models, interaction models, and navigation mechanisms are also addressed.
This document discusses level design for computer games. It covers the nature of level design, including the space, initial conditions, challenges, and aesthetics. It also discusses universal level design principles such as tutorial levels, varying progression, rewarding players, and punishing less. Genre-specific principles for different game types are also outlined. Common level layouts including linear, parallel, ring, network, hub-and-spoke, and combined are defined. Finally, the level design process from planning to testing is summarized.
This document discusses concepts and processes for interactive storytelling and designing narratives for computer games. It covers objectives of storytelling like entertainment and selling games. It also distinguishes between narrative and gameplay, and discusses different narrative formats, the story writing process, structures like linear and branching stories, and using dialogues. The key points are that interactive stories let players choose or cause events, and good game narratives balance player control and pre-written cutscenes to create tension and guide the story.
This document discusses character design for computer games. It covers developing characters around the story and gameplay, different types of avatars from non-defined to specific, controlling avatars both indirectly and directly, common stereotypes in gender-specific design, and using archetypes or a story-driven approach. Key aspects of design include concept art, model sheets, background papers, attributes, and audio design. The mission is to design a game character with sketches, attributes, and details.
The document discusses various aspects of designing game worlds, including physical, time, environmental, cultural, and emotional elements. Physical aspects include the spatial dimensions, scale, and borders of the game world. Time aspects cover time limits, variable pacing, anomalous time effects, and letting players adjust the speed of time. Environmental aspects relate to the physical surroundings, artwork style, and cultural context. Emotional aspects involve eliciting emotions in players through storytelling, social interactions, and fun gameplay.
This document discusses techniques for balancing computer games, including ensuring meaningful player choices, avoiding dominant strategies, incorporating randomness appropriately, maintaining a fair game, and adjusting difficulty levels. It emphasizes that games should be based on player skill rather than luck, provide equal chances to win, avoid dead ends, and challenge players at a suitable difficulty. The document also discusses concepts like flow and positive feedback that are important to consider when balancing games.
This document provides information on core mechanics for game design. It defines core mechanics as the data and algorithms that describe game rules and operations. Core mechanics activate challenges, track player actions, and determine success/failure. The document discusses defining resources, objects and their behaviors, relationships between objects, events/processes related to objects, and conditions for objects/events. It provides examples of core mechanics for a WW2 Paris game, including objects, relationships, and conditions. The document concludes by outlining guidelines for designing core mechanics, emphasizing simplicity, generalization, and achieving an appropriate level of detail.
This document discusses gameplay design for computer games. It explains that gameplay should be designed before story and graphics and defines gameplay as the core fun factor that should engage players. Gameplay involves challenges, which are objectives related to genre, and actions, which are player inputs. Challenges can include physical coordination, logic, math, time pressure, knowledge, memory, pattern recognition, exploration, conflict, economics, reasoning and thinking. Actions are verbs like accelerate, turn, jump. The document provides examples of challenge hierarchies and actions for different genres. It concludes by assigning a mission to design the gameplay for a game, including challenges, challenge hierarchy, essential and other actions.
This document outlines the key components of a game concept, including a description of the game idea, players' roles, gameplay modes, genre, target audience, hardware platform, competition/collaboration modes, game world, unique selling points, and marketing strategy. It provides examples of different genres that may involve physical, economic, conceptual, tactical, logistic, exploration, or logic challenges. It also distinguishes between hardcore and casual gaming audiences and lists common business models and platforms. The overall purpose is to guide students in developing their own game concepts by addressing these essential elements.
The document provides guidance for developing a game idea, including sources of inspiration, describing the idea, and details for "Mission #3" where students will present and pitch original game ideas. Students are instructed to draw from dreams, other media, existing games, and idea generation tools when developing their concepts. The game idea should be described in 1-3 sentences or a short paragraph covering the goal, main player activities, and what makes the game unique. For the mission, each student will have 3 minutes to pitch a new game idea to the class, with the best ideas voted on and teams formed to develop them further.
The document outlines the game design process, including concept, production, and design team stages. The concept stage involves developing the initial idea, genre, target audience, and player role. In production, prototypes are created during preproduction, followed by full production iterations. The design team roles include lead designer, game designer, level designer, UI designer, writer, art director, and audio director. Competences needed for game design are also listed, such as imagination, technical skills, analysis, aesthetics, research, writing, and drawing.
This document discusses game elements and the design of computer games. It defines what constitutes a game and lists common game elements such as play, goals, rules, challenges, and actions. It also distinguishes traditional games from computer games and describes various game classifications, structures, and components. Game structure is broken down into game mechanics, gameplay modes, and the user interface. A number of interaction models, camera modes, and menu/screen types are also outlined.
This document outlines the course objectives, content, schedule, and learning methods for a course on designing computer games. The course will cover topics like game definition, elements, design stages, roles, gameplay, mechanics, balancing, characters, and storytelling. It will involve gamified learning through missions, levels and XP that can be earned through game analyses, ideas, roles, concepts, prototypes and presentations. The schedule lists daily topics over the weeklong course, which will include teacher presentations, quizzes, workshops and student work. Learning materials and examples will be sourced from online game design resources and the Time Mesh history game.
The document discusses the project closure process, which includes formal closure of the work, handing over final project results and verification. It describes the inputs, methods and outputs of closure such as collecting documentation, analyzing success and failures, gathering lessons learned, finishing contracts, and creating a document of formal closure. The closure process also involves administrative and archiving tasks like closing accounts, defining the reason for closure, and storing project documentation.
The document discusses project monitoring and control processes. It covers monitoring schedule, scope, cost, quality, risks, and the project team. Key aspects of control include collecting performance data, comparing to the baseline plan, identifying variances, and taking corrective actions. Control aims to keep the project on track by managing changes to the schedule, budget, and scope as needed based on project performance and risk assessments. Control processes are integrated across areas like scheduling, procurement, reporting, and configuration management to maintain overall project integration.
The document discusses various aspects of project execution and control, including information distribution, work execution, procurement management, performance reporting, and other key activities. It provides details on communication methods, data collection, earned value analysis, and trend analysis used during project execution to monitor progress and ensure the project is delivered on schedule and within budget. Project execution involves overseeing the work performed to deliver the project, managing procurement, distributing information to stakeholders, collecting performance data, and reporting on progress.
This document outlines a project plan for developing a language learning game called "Language Adventure". The game will use dialogue and role-playing to help language students practice speaking in a low-pressure computer-mediated environment. It will be a 2D graphical adventure game delivered on the web. The project aims to develop 3 chapters with 5 scenes each over 3 months with a budget of €61,200. The target group is elementary school students aged 7-12 as well as adult language learners. Key milestones include developing the game concept, prototype, and teacher materials. Regular communication with clients and the team is planned to ensure project success.
The document discusses project integration management. It defines project integration management as the consolidation and integration actions that are important for project completion. The purpose of project integration management is to identify, define, combine, and unify the various project management activities. Examples of project integration include integrating the project with the main organization, integrating project processes and stages, and integrating project documentation. Project integration management is part of the overall project management plan and involves developing the project charter, scope statement, and management plan to integrate the various project elements.
The document discusses risk management for projects. It defines risk as an uncertain event that can positively or negatively impact project duration, cost, scope, or quality. The purposes of risk management are to identify, analyze, and respond to risks in order to increase the likelihood of positive events and decrease the likelihood of negative events. The key components of risk management are planning, identification, analysis, response planning, and monitoring and control. Risk management should be incorporated into the overall project plan.
The document discusses procurement management in projects. It describes the key steps in procurement including procurement planning, bidding, selecting partners, and contract administration. The procurement process involves make-or-buy analysis to determine whether to purchase products externally. Contracts can take different types depending on the level of risk transfer desired. Evaluation criteria are used to qualify sellers and proposals are assessed using techniques like weighting systems. Procurement documentation like bidding invitations and contracts are key outputs of the process.
The document discusses cost management in project management. It covers cost estimating, cost budgeting, and cost control. Cost estimating involves estimating activity costs using methods like top-down, parametric, and bottom-up. Cost budgeting takes the activity cost estimates and develops a cost baseline and funding plan. Cost control involves comparing actual costs to the baseline, performing variance analysis using earned value management, and forecasting the project estimate at completion.
The document discusses communication management for projects. It provides information on communication objectives, skills, models, planning, distribution and performance reporting. Communication planning involves analyzing stakeholder needs, selecting channels, and creating a plan detailing information rules and schedules. Information distribution makes information available in a timely manner using methods like meetings and databases. Performance reporting gathers baseline and current data which is compiled into reports using tools like earned value analysis and trend analysis. The document provides examples and exercises to help explain the concepts.
The document discusses human resource management for projects. It provides information on project HR planning, including estimating resource needs, acquiring and assigning team members, and developing the project team. The inputs, methods, and outputs of HR planning are described. Specifically, methods for HR planning include using a role assignment matrix, assignment planning, networking and negotiations. Key outputs include the staffing plan, schedule updates, and training needs. The document also discusses team development and management over the project lifecycle.
This document discusses character design for computer games. It covers developing characters around the story and gameplay, different types of avatars from non-defined to specific, controlling avatars both indirectly and directly, common stereotypes in gender-specific design, and using archetypes or a story-driven approach. Key aspects of design include concept art, model sheets, background papers, attributes, and audio design. The mission is to design a game character with sketches, attributes, and details.
The document discusses various aspects of designing game worlds, including physical, time, environmental, cultural, and emotional elements. Physical aspects include the spatial dimensions, scale, and borders of the game world. Time aspects cover time limits, variable pacing, anomalous time effects, and letting players adjust the speed of time. Environmental aspects relate to the physical surroundings, artwork style, and cultural context. Emotional aspects involve eliciting emotions in players through storytelling, social interactions, and fun gameplay.
This document discusses techniques for balancing computer games, including ensuring meaningful player choices, avoiding dominant strategies, incorporating randomness appropriately, maintaining a fair game, and adjusting difficulty levels. It emphasizes that games should be based on player skill rather than luck, provide equal chances to win, avoid dead ends, and challenge players at a suitable difficulty. The document also discusses concepts like flow and positive feedback that are important to consider when balancing games.
This document provides information on core mechanics for game design. It defines core mechanics as the data and algorithms that describe game rules and operations. Core mechanics activate challenges, track player actions, and determine success/failure. The document discusses defining resources, objects and their behaviors, relationships between objects, events/processes related to objects, and conditions for objects/events. It provides examples of core mechanics for a WW2 Paris game, including objects, relationships, and conditions. The document concludes by outlining guidelines for designing core mechanics, emphasizing simplicity, generalization, and achieving an appropriate level of detail.
This document discusses gameplay design for computer games. It explains that gameplay should be designed before story and graphics and defines gameplay as the core fun factor that should engage players. Gameplay involves challenges, which are objectives related to genre, and actions, which are player inputs. Challenges can include physical coordination, logic, math, time pressure, knowledge, memory, pattern recognition, exploration, conflict, economics, reasoning and thinking. Actions are verbs like accelerate, turn, jump. The document provides examples of challenge hierarchies and actions for different genres. It concludes by assigning a mission to design the gameplay for a game, including challenges, challenge hierarchy, essential and other actions.
This document outlines the key components of a game concept, including a description of the game idea, players' roles, gameplay modes, genre, target audience, hardware platform, competition/collaboration modes, game world, unique selling points, and marketing strategy. It provides examples of different genres that may involve physical, economic, conceptual, tactical, logistic, exploration, or logic challenges. It also distinguishes between hardcore and casual gaming audiences and lists common business models and platforms. The overall purpose is to guide students in developing their own game concepts by addressing these essential elements.
The document provides guidance for developing a game idea, including sources of inspiration, describing the idea, and details for "Mission #3" where students will present and pitch original game ideas. Students are instructed to draw from dreams, other media, existing games, and idea generation tools when developing their concepts. The game idea should be described in 1-3 sentences or a short paragraph covering the goal, main player activities, and what makes the game unique. For the mission, each student will have 3 minutes to pitch a new game idea to the class, with the best ideas voted on and teams formed to develop them further.
The document outlines the game design process, including concept, production, and design team stages. The concept stage involves developing the initial idea, genre, target audience, and player role. In production, prototypes are created during preproduction, followed by full production iterations. The design team roles include lead designer, game designer, level designer, UI designer, writer, art director, and audio director. Competences needed for game design are also listed, such as imagination, technical skills, analysis, aesthetics, research, writing, and drawing.
This document discusses game elements and the design of computer games. It defines what constitutes a game and lists common game elements such as play, goals, rules, challenges, and actions. It also distinguishes traditional games from computer games and describes various game classifications, structures, and components. Game structure is broken down into game mechanics, gameplay modes, and the user interface. A number of interaction models, camera modes, and menu/screen types are also outlined.
This document outlines the course objectives, content, schedule, and learning methods for a course on designing computer games. The course will cover topics like game definition, elements, design stages, roles, gameplay, mechanics, balancing, characters, and storytelling. It will involve gamified learning through missions, levels and XP that can be earned through game analyses, ideas, roles, concepts, prototypes and presentations. The schedule lists daily topics over the weeklong course, which will include teacher presentations, quizzes, workshops and student work. Learning materials and examples will be sourced from online game design resources and the Time Mesh history game.
The document discusses the project closure process, which includes formal closure of the work, handing over final project results and verification. It describes the inputs, methods and outputs of closure such as collecting documentation, analyzing success and failures, gathering lessons learned, finishing contracts, and creating a document of formal closure. The closure process also involves administrative and archiving tasks like closing accounts, defining the reason for closure, and storing project documentation.
The document discusses project monitoring and control processes. It covers monitoring schedule, scope, cost, quality, risks, and the project team. Key aspects of control include collecting performance data, comparing to the baseline plan, identifying variances, and taking corrective actions. Control aims to keep the project on track by managing changes to the schedule, budget, and scope as needed based on project performance and risk assessments. Control processes are integrated across areas like scheduling, procurement, reporting, and configuration management to maintain overall project integration.
The document discusses various aspects of project execution and control, including information distribution, work execution, procurement management, performance reporting, and other key activities. It provides details on communication methods, data collection, earned value analysis, and trend analysis used during project execution to monitor progress and ensure the project is delivered on schedule and within budget. Project execution involves overseeing the work performed to deliver the project, managing procurement, distributing information to stakeholders, collecting performance data, and reporting on progress.
This document outlines a project plan for developing a language learning game called "Language Adventure". The game will use dialogue and role-playing to help language students practice speaking in a low-pressure computer-mediated environment. It will be a 2D graphical adventure game delivered on the web. The project aims to develop 3 chapters with 5 scenes each over 3 months with a budget of €61,200. The target group is elementary school students aged 7-12 as well as adult language learners. Key milestones include developing the game concept, prototype, and teacher materials. Regular communication with clients and the team is planned to ensure project success.
The document discusses project integration management. It defines project integration management as the consolidation and integration actions that are important for project completion. The purpose of project integration management is to identify, define, combine, and unify the various project management activities. Examples of project integration include integrating the project with the main organization, integrating project processes and stages, and integrating project documentation. Project integration management is part of the overall project management plan and involves developing the project charter, scope statement, and management plan to integrate the various project elements.
The document discusses risk management for projects. It defines risk as an uncertain event that can positively or negatively impact project duration, cost, scope, or quality. The purposes of risk management are to identify, analyze, and respond to risks in order to increase the likelihood of positive events and decrease the likelihood of negative events. The key components of risk management are planning, identification, analysis, response planning, and monitoring and control. Risk management should be incorporated into the overall project plan.
The document discusses procurement management in projects. It describes the key steps in procurement including procurement planning, bidding, selecting partners, and contract administration. The procurement process involves make-or-buy analysis to determine whether to purchase products externally. Contracts can take different types depending on the level of risk transfer desired. Evaluation criteria are used to qualify sellers and proposals are assessed using techniques like weighting systems. Procurement documentation like bidding invitations and contracts are key outputs of the process.
The document discusses cost management in project management. It covers cost estimating, cost budgeting, and cost control. Cost estimating involves estimating activity costs using methods like top-down, parametric, and bottom-up. Cost budgeting takes the activity cost estimates and develops a cost baseline and funding plan. Cost control involves comparing actual costs to the baseline, performing variance analysis using earned value management, and forecasting the project estimate at completion.
The document discusses communication management for projects. It provides information on communication objectives, skills, models, planning, distribution and performance reporting. Communication planning involves analyzing stakeholder needs, selecting channels, and creating a plan detailing information rules and schedules. Information distribution makes information available in a timely manner using methods like meetings and databases. Performance reporting gathers baseline and current data which is compiled into reports using tools like earned value analysis and trend analysis. The document provides examples and exercises to help explain the concepts.
The document discusses human resource management for projects. It provides information on project HR planning, including estimating resource needs, acquiring and assigning team members, and developing the project team. The inputs, methods, and outputs of HR planning are described. Specifically, methods for HR planning include using a role assignment matrix, assignment planning, networking and negotiations. Key outputs include the staffing plan, schedule updates, and training needs. The document also discusses team development and management over the project lifecycle.