Minimum Viable Product
You may do either 2-D or 3-D. There is absolutely no requirement that your
game be 3-D. If there had been a C# textbook that introduced the 2-D
features of Unity rather than 3-D, I would have chosen that. I have no
preference for 3-D.
The purpose of this exercise is to finalize the MVP of your project -
this is the "contract" between you and the instructors for the grading
of your project - and add those last elements to the design (culturally-
relevant design and support for students with learning differences or
physical disabilities).
You need to submit your MVP for acceptance. Your MVP needs to include:
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The landing page or outer world of your game that shows what the overall
game play is like. If you have a large world like Zelda, then you just need
to make a small part of the world - enough for someone to understand what
is going on and really illustrate the premise and feel of navigating your game.
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Necessary elements for game play like scores, health, etc. Describe what
aspects you will include.
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Three levels or minigames -
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elementary level (potentially tutorial).
The purpose of this is to illustrate how you are going to teach an
initial concept and the game mechanics
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intermediate level (level n), spread out from the elementary level.
This shows what your more advanced play will be like, and how it will
teach a more advanced concept.
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intermediate level (level n+1), the level just after the last one.
This shows how you gradually increase difficulty in your levels.
This needs to be a very similar level to the previous one and not
introduce an entirely new mechanic or topic. I want to see how two
different levels treat the same subject with different levels of
difficulty.
Take care about the definition of "level." A level in a video game requires several actions, not just one, all at approximately the same difficulty. For example, in our Qupcakery game (quander.cs.uchicago.edu),
one level of the game introduces a new quantum gate and/or is designed for specific level of difficult with
the newest gate and possibly other gates. A single level consists of about 10 groups of customers coming to get qupcakes. This means they need to solve about 10 quantum challenges for each level.
The three levels cannot be three completely disconnected topics or experiences, introducing three
completely separate things - I need to see how you build difficulty gradually. For example, you
may introduce something in one level, giving them 10 or so chances to engage with it. Then you have
a next level that combines that new thing with something already in the game, making them choose between
the two or combine the two.
This depends a bit on what your game
is like. This could be two different minigames instead of three, with one
showing two sequential levels and the other being different. So look at
your game and see what makes sense compared to the goals of this requirement.
Minimal Viable Product Specifications
Since each of you have different projects, we will need to evaluate each project differently. The purpose of this document is to provide more details on what you will implement in your MVP. We will review this to adjust for difficulty based on your game idea and the platform you are using to develop your game. We will use this specification to grade your final MVP.
Short Game Description
Make Humans Angry Again is a puzzle game where you will travel back in time to stop the destruction of the world. You can manipulate spacetime so you use gravity assist to travel through the multiverse to get to our universe. Your job is to arrange the stars, planets, moons, and asteroids in each universe so you can use their gravities to reach the wormhole and get to the next universe.
MVP Specs
Elements of the game and their functionality:
The spaceship orbits around the stars, planets, moons, and asteroids.
The spaceship has a health bar.
Stars, planets and asteroids have different gravities because they have different masses.
The grader should be able to tell that stars have a stronger pull than planets, etc.
Colliding with stars kills the spaceship.
Colliding with planets, moons and asteroids make you lose health points; colliding into more massive objects costs more health points.
Colliding with a wormhole brings you to the next level.
You can move the space objects within certain boundaries.
Settings:
There will be an intro splash page, a main page with level numbers, and the
backdrop for each level. To go into the level, click on the level number. Only
three level numbers will be active.
Level definition:
A level consists of three challenges at the same level of difficulty, with the
same number of stars and planets. Once the ship gets to the intended position on one screen, it moves to the next screen of similar difficulty, until if
completes all three screens.
Level descriptions:
3 universes/levels - one introductory level and two intermediate levels:
Level 1: 1 star and 1 planet so the players learn that stars are lethal and planets just cost you points. Stars also have a stronger pull than planets.
Level 12: 1 star, 2 planets, and 4 moons so players learn that moons cost fewer health points than planets and has a lower gravity.
Level 13: 1 star, 2 planets, 2 moons, and 1 asteroid. This is similar difficulty to level 14, but the asteroid introduces an additional gravity wrinkle.