Assignment 15
Beta Release

Demo: Monday, April 27th at 10:10 am
Due: Thursday, April 30th at 11:59 pm

Your third presentation is your beta presentation. The beta demonstration should show off a clearly recognizable (but unfinished) game. Your game should have a clear progression. This means different levels of progressive difficulty (e.g. easy, medium, and hard). For games that do not use levels, you need to clearly demonstrate how the game gets harder over time.

While you may still be working on art, we do not want to hear about major future gameplay elements. Anything in your gameplay spec that is listed as "critical" must be finished. After beta, you should not be doing anything but tweaking parameters and making levels from your existing gameplay elements. You can add some "desirable" features, but only if the game with your critical elements is finished with level design and testing. In fact, if you add any new elements at all, we suggest that you take a "snapshot" of your beta release before continuing. Save a copy of that code in some folder that will never, ever be erased or modified.

This is an important release, because we will finally be making grade predictions after this release. We had wanted to make grade predictions after pre-beta, but the games were not far enough along to do that. We will not only predict your grade on that game, but your overall grade in the class. You can use this information to decide whether or not you want to switch to S/U before the end of the course.

Class Presentation

The vast majority (up to 75%) of your presentation should consist of someone playing the game and showing it off to the class. You should have one person playing it while another team member narrates the play; the narrator and player should not be the same person (so that the player can concentrate on playing). The narrator should point out game play elements, challenges, and strategies as the player encounters them. We expect this to be somewhat rehearsed. You should develop a script for this presentation and stick to it (to the best of your player's ability at the game).

Level Design Patterns

As with all of the presentations, we do want a slide presentation with design ideas. However, the design presentation will be different this time. We no longer want to see art in your design presentation. Our philosophy is that, from this point forward, any finished art should be incorporated into the game.

Instead, we want you to review your level design ideas. In this slide presentation, an oral summary of your level design document, so that you can share this with the rest of the class. In particular, we want

• A brief statement of your level design philosophy
• At least three basic patterns that exists in your beta release
• A composite pattern combining two or more of these patterns (which is also in your release).

Presentation Schedule

Once again, we will be handling this release as an online presentation. The format will be the same as last time (though hopefully we have learned a few things). We will hold them over three class days: the Monday and Wednesday "lectures" and the Tuesday "lab". Attendance is mandatory for the lectures and your lab section. You are welcome to attend the other lab section if you wish.

When we get near the presentation data, we will include secure Zoom links below. You will need to use your netid to access these links. The presentation schedule is as follows.

Monday (April 27) [Zoom Recording]

• Overplayed (Low On Ink)
• Snip Snip Studios (No Strings Attached)
• Lucid8 (Modosu)

Tuesday (April 28) [Zoom Recording]

Section 201 (11:15-12:05)

• TeamOne (Tempus)
• Zenith Games (Fallen Flame)
• Nonstop Soup (Octoplasm)

Section 202 (12:20-1:10)

• Unclear Studio (Rekindle)
• SOYA Studios (Night Bite)
• Duodecimal Games (The Night Watch)

Wednesday (April 29) [Zoom Recording]

• Octave Games (Astrobeat)
• Team Waypoint (Parole in On)
• Glassbox Games (Rubato)

Submission

Due: Thursday, April 30th at 11:59 pm

Once again for this assignment, we ask you to turn in your release. This should be a rough snapshot of your game. In particular, we would like an executable JAR, and not something that requires you to build any software. Create an official a GitHub release for us, like you did with the gameplay prototype. There is nothing to turn into CMS.

We are again asking for you to turn this in before the Friday class (so Thursday night at the latest). We are going to have another playtest session for this release. Make sure to read the details in this playtesting session as we are asking for a little more from you this time.

Finally, you should not forget to turn in your third two week report (which is due on Saturday). This will allow us to see how you are organizing you time, and make suggestions for the final milestones.