ART 007 - The Art of the Game- Schedule

Introduction to the class

Introduction to the class and the professors

Examples of artists working in this area:

• Eddo Stern
• Feng Mengbo
• Harun Farocki

• Alchemy by Nicholas Molina
• Cannon vs. Cannon by Khaled Abu-Ghazaleh
• Final Fantasy remix by Greg Pashtenko
• Deliverance by Colin Winders
• Saving Hope by Ron Burgess, Ryan Swartz, and Diego Holguin
• Next Stop, Murder! by Francesco Albanese

Module 1: Character Development

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Module 1 - continued

Module 2: Author Page

By the end of Wednesday's class, you should have a gameArt subdirectory in your www directory. you should have a page in the folder entitled index.html. This page is where you will put links to all of the assignments that you turn in for the class. (Sample page code)

Define Yourself You should sketch out a page that identifies you as the author of the work you will do this semester. The structure and design of the page should support the message you are trying to communicate to the reader. This is your first story -- the story of yourself.

Nice resource to help you decide on site color scheme.

FEBRUARY 10 GUEST SPEAKER: Meet in DMCA, 149 York Street.

Module 2 - continued

Think about the role of images in storytelling. How does our ability to imagine the characters and the world if we are provided with images? Begin more complex stylesheet formatting: div and span tags.

Simple animations are best made using small gif images. Here are two examples done by former students:
homepage animation by benjamin childers
pac-man's realization by cortney williams

Take a look at Shelley Jackson's body. how can we use image maps as interesting forms of interactive navigation?

Here is a very simple image map. This one is a more complicated image map.

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Module 3

Module 3 - continued

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Module 4

Using Twine to map and test your story structure.

Module 4 - Continued

due Sunday: Conduct a usability evaluation of your story. Here are two examples :Ron and Connor. Have 5-8 people take your usability test. Review your results and then summarize your findings. Your summary should include the questions you asked and the following : What worked best, What didn't work well, Did they explore the entire story? Did users have problems with navigation? Did they like the design? Did they like it enough to replay and/or share with friends? You should also discuss what you could do to improve it for the final game version.

Module 5

Telling stories with video

Module 5 - continued

Here is an example of how to load a video in an html page.

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Module 6

Making a narrative game. We will learn how to build a whole story in one page. There are three different ways to choose from:

This one one is the simplest. It uses Javascript to load elements in the page dynamically. We will go over how this works in detail. Here is the map which is the key to everything.

This is an example of a structure that provides the player with an inventory and based on the contents of the inventory creates winning and losing conditions. Here is the map that shows the structure.

Here is a structure that uses an external javascript page but allows for multiple html pages for those of you using image maps, for example.

Module 6 - continued

Conclusion

We will meet Wednesday of reading week in lieu of a final exam.

• The final version of your game
• A Usability test for your game
• Your final reflection

In order for us to be able to give you credit for your design materials, you can either upload them and link them to your index or give us paper documents (to Sarah at 1156 Chapel - room 208).