Doom Slayer III

One of the student games in the contest I ran two night's ago did a two minute trailer for his game. It was actually really fun to watch and I thought I would link to it here since he just uploaded it. Most of the content from this video was in game capture. It is a real game that is fully playable, created by a sophmore at Chapman University in about 6-7 weeks. A huge piece of work for that short of time. He is going to be an amazing programmer.

Doom Slayer III
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN5E3E_nIhA

I've already posted it, but the final results of the contest are here.
http://www.gamedev360.com/contest07/

Tonight's Contest

Tonight is the night I'm hosting a bunch of local game industry folks to view the student projects and presentations. The best game get's a $100 gift card, but the students have done most of the work with the opportunity to get in front of a bunch of folks from industry. It's an experiment, but right now the wave looks a lot bigger than I ever expected.

This is how judging will be weighted. It doesn't have anything to do with their grade on the project, just who 'wins' best game.

Completeness: (25 %)
Replay/fun factor (20 %)
Uniqueness (15 %)
Story (10 %)
Graphics (10 %)
Simple graphics that are used in a unique way will also receive high scores here.
Audio: (10 %)
Student Choice: (10%) (max 90 points = 18 students x 5 points each)

I've tried to break completness out into the following sub items: Splash screen, main menu, Scoring, Game has a story, Game controls/play, multiple levels, game ends/menu cycle/quit, high score system.

I have this obscene spreadsheet created which will automatically calculate the winner based on judges input. Once I have the number (1-100) from the judges for each game and category I simply imput them and come up with a winner. I did this last year, but I put the numbers in as I went. I just hope it doesn't take forever to enter the data, but things have a way of working themselves out. I'll report again tomorrow with the winners.

Just as I finish writing this I may dump the spreadsheet and just ask for the judges first, second and third choices for the winner. Hmmm.

Game development class - huge finale

If you've been following my blog you know I've been teaching a game development class. The student's have been working on their own creations for almost half the semester and here is a (two week old) preview of the results.

http://www.gamedev360.com/contest07/preview.html

I have about 10 people from five of six of the biggest game companies in the area coming to judge the final presentations. I offered the student with the best game a $100 EB giftcard. Last year they were focused on the gift card, this year I'm sure they are focused on the job so putting them together with people who are looking for talent seems like a win win for everyone. All sides are excited.

I went into the lab on Saturday to help students with last minute problems and I have to say this is one of the best group of students I have ever had. The quality of the work is phenominal. The screenshots on the contest preview are almost three weeks old and the games since then are looking very very polished. A couple of them are going to be standouts.

There was the funniest quote the other day in one of the extra lab sessions. About halfway through the class I stopped assigning homework and allowing the student's to work on their own projects. One of the student's said to me, "Man, when you stopped assigning homework this class got a lot harder!". That has to be one of my all time favorite teaching quotes. The pressure of the final presentation in front of industry seems to have really worked.

I'll try and post results of the contest on Wednesday. I've been spending every minute of my free time on this contest. What am I going to do with all that extra free time?

Motivating students with a contest

A $100 EB gift card prize goes a long way in motivating a group of students. Sure it costs me a large percentage of the money I make teaching the class, but if I cared about the money I wouldn't teach the class in the first place. Adjunct teaching doesn't pay, at least not for me. I love to teach and the little I do make is just an added bonus.

I've done the contest once before and the work was amazing. This year I've upped the ante and invited a bunch of execs and hiring mangers from local game companies to be the final judges. This will be a great opportunity for the students to show their talent and for these game company folks to hire amazing young talent. It also motivates the students to spend extra time on their projects which is the only way to learn to program. All sides are primed and ready and it seems like the perfect matchup so far.

We still have 6 more weeks of development time left for the students, but after two weeks officially working on their final projects I am throughly impressed with the results. This is going to be much better than last year.

For those that are worried about it, the contest placing has no bearing on the grade for the students' final projects. I'll grade under the same rules as the contest, but that grade is separate from contest placing.