Lab Activities
This page contains the instructions for the various labs that are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the semester. These labs are broken up into ENGRC Labs, Game Labs, and Playtesting Sessions.
ENGRC Labs
The ENGRC labs are part of the companion course ENGRC 3152. They are intended to help you both prepare and revise the numerous documents involved in this course. As a result, there is never anything additional to turn in. However, in a few cases, we do have any associated critique session following that lab. You should pay attention to these.
| Lab | Task | Date | Critique |
|---|---|---|---|
| ENGRC 1 | Team Orientation | 01/23/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 2 | Idea Formation | 01/30/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 3 | Concept Workshop | 02/06/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 4 | Paper Prototyping | 02/13/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 5 | Milestones | 02/20/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 6 | Gameplay Workshop | 02/22/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 7 | Technical Preparations | 02/29/24 | 03/01/24 |
| ENGRC 8 | Technical Workshop | 03/12/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 9 | Technical Workshop | 03/14/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 10 | Challenge Design | 03/26/24 | 03/29/24 |
| ENGRC 11 | Level Design | 03/28/24 | 03/29/24 |
| ENGRC 12 | Code Walkthrough | 04/16/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 13 | Manual Workshop | 04/18/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 14 | Portfolio Revision | 04/30/24 | N/A |
| ENGRC 15 | Portfolio Revision | 05/02/24 | N/A |
Game Labs
The game labs are individual labs to provide you with a “quick start” in the class. They introduce you to topics well before we cover them in lecture, so that you can already start thinking about them in your game design. Remember that students enrolled in the CS listing must do the programming labs. Students enrolled in INFO may work on either of the required labs below, but should only submit one lab to be graded.
| Lab | Required (one only) | Deadline | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lab 1 | Code: LibGDX | Design: Storyboarding | 01/31/24 |
| Lab 2 | Code: Pathfinding | Design: Art Assets | 02/07/24 |
| Lab 3 | Code: Optimization | Design: Animation | 02/14/24 |
| Lab 4 | Code: Physics | Design: Level Design | 02/22/24 |
Submission Guidelines
Lab submissions are made using CMS. There are a few guidelines for submissions:
- They should be coherent and understandable.
- They must be in the correct format (typically .pdf or .zip).
- They must abide the course academic integrity policy.
Playtesting Sessions
Once the semester is fully underway, and the game labs are complete, we will occasionally use a discussion section for playtesting. This is a chance for you to play the games produced by your classmates and provide them feedback. This is an important part of the course and attendance is mandatory. Besides, who does not want credit just for playing games?
The first few playtesting sessions will be very informal. But as the course progresses, we will want to you to structure these sessions so that you can properly analyze the results. Read the instructions below for our expectations for each playtesting session.
| Session | Task | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Playtest 1 | Gameplay Playtest | 03/07/24 |
| Playtest 2 | Technical Playtest | 03/21/24 |
| Playtest 3 | Alpha Release | 04/11/24 |
| Playtest 4 | Beta Release | 04/25/24 |