Will students be assigned random project teams?

Students are expected to form their own teams.

How many students can form a team?

3 students per team should allow for a decently-scoped game project to be developed.

Will we choose from a given set of game projects or can we make whatever we want?

Teams will implement a limited-scope game of their own choice. The project should be a game that is small enough that it can be finished within the semester with good quality, but should have enough depth to understand how to make an appealing product using the tools available in Unity. Examples are a single level of a platformer such as Mario, a Tetris-like puzzle game, a Candy Crush-type matching game, or a single level of a physics game such as Angry Birds. A few others are mentioned in the lecture slides, but these suggestions are by no means close to being an exhaustive list.

Inspiration can come from games you are playing these days or have played in the past, but it is expected that an original game will be developed, not a direct clone. Other good sources of inspiration are global game jam entries and past winners. 

To prevent plagiarism and use of pre-written or AI-generated code, students will be required to hand in the entire project folder, including assets and C# scripts.

I don’t have experience with Unity; will I be able to make the project?

We will spend 2 lectures on Unity basics; self-study via YouTube tutorials or other sources will be required. Once you are past the initial learning curve, you’ll be quite comfortable with Unity.

Please note that Unity is a tool, but Computer Science is about learning ideas and techniques. Tools help increase our productivity when applying ideas to specified problems. It is not the goal of a CS education to teach students specific tools that might or might not be relevant in 5 years’ time.

You may have to study specific Unity systems for the type of game you want to make; for example, tilemaps and related systems are used to make platformers, spring joints are useful for physics games, ragdoll physics systems are useful to simulate character death when 3D character models feature prominently in a game.

Unity overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwZpJzpE2lQ

New input system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjee_e4fICc

I have experience with C++ but not C#; will we be taught C#?

In the Unity lecture, we will see basic usage of C#, but due to time constraints, the language can’t be taught in class. It’s a fairly simple language to pick up if you know object-oriented programming concepts from C++, and Unity tutorials will cover it well.

Will the final game demos be held in the final exam period?

Teams will demonstrate their game to their fellow students in the last couple of classes. This will allow students to get comfortable with presenting their work to others, fielding any questions that their peers may have, and also rate themselves against their peers’ games.