OMSCS — Video Game Design
Overview
Video Game Design is the least ‘academic’ class I have taken. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but adjust your expectations accordingly. It is much more akin to a crash course bootcamp in Unity than a master’s course in computer science. The lectures will provide a 10,000 feet view to the types of problems and research that video game design encounters, and then boil it down to the couple of buttons and options that Unity provides to address those concerns.
Most of the learning comes from the group project where you make an actual video game in Unity. There are some homework assignments (called milestones), but they are pretty much step-by-step directions on how to do something in Unity that you will need to eventually also implement in your final project.
This class is trivially easy if, for example, you and your group were to decide to do the absolute bare minimum to meet all the requirements and get an A. But that’s no fun! Video games are in the unique position where they are never really finished. You can always add more levels, tweak parameters, and include new features. If you think you’re the type of person what would enjoy being completely engrossed in a project like this, I’d recommend VGD being the only course you take that semester just so you can throw yourself completely into it.
Tips
- Don’t worry if you’re new to Unity or C#. You can easily pick it up as you go.
- Get a good group. I have no tips on how to actually do that, since everyone on OMSCS are strangers, but most of your time will be working on this final project, so a good group will be important. Meet regularly, and commit to concrete deliverables each week.
- Most milestones have a corresponding lecture where the professor pretty much walks through how to do everything. Just follow along.
- I would generally try to front load the lectures and milestones. Again, the final project is where all the magic happens. Everything else is just content that will help you create your game. I found the recommended schedule of lectures and homework to be too slow a cadence and you will be scrambling to get your alpha finished. The alpha version is the first version of your game, which needs all major components expected in the final version, and is due about 2/3 of the way through the semester (i.e. much sooner than you want it to).
- The textbook, Game Design Workshop, is by no means necessary but it is quite the fun read.
- The professor was active on Piazza and seemed pretty knowledgeable about the obscure ins and outs of Unity. He can be an invaluable resource.
- It can be very easy to be overly ambitious for your game. There just never is enough time. Do your best to keep the scope small at first, and only add more features later. Easier said than done, I know.
- The Unity website provides a lot of tutorials that are fun and easy to follow. Otherwise, Youtube will also be rife with tutorials. Many of my class’ video games ended up implementing very similar looking health bars for our main character since I am assuming we all used the first hit on Google for ‘how to create a health bar in Unity.’
