MEDIAART 3L03: Technical Practice

The 5 areas of technical practice we’ll explore in this course are 3D assets, 2D user interfaces (UI), Sound, Mechanics, and Camera/Control. One of the basic expectations in the course is that you will achieve at least level 1 (of 3 possible levels) in ALL 5 areas of technical practice, and achieving level 2 or 3 is encouraged and recognized by earning higher grades in the course. Although there’s no special technical area for Level Design, we’ll also explore that as part of our technical practice, since the way you demonstrate competence in a technical area is through submitting a playable game that demonstrates the relevant technical concepts. Typically, this would be a very small game submitted during or shortly after our weekly class meetings (and no later than 10 PM) during Weeks 1-6. I’ll also accept demonstrations of technical areas that are part of your Individual Game Project submission. You’ll be able to see on Avenue To Learn what level you’ve achieved in each of the 5 areas.

The 3 levels of technical achievement involve different levels of guidance (from me) and independence and responsibility (from you). For level 1, I’ll provide detailed step-by-step instructions for how to achieve it in each area of technical practice. For level 2, I’ll provide somewhat less detailed instructions (sometimes mostly in the form of comments on a template project that demonstrates the concepts). For level 3, I’ll provide only indications of some possible starting points, suggestions, and concepts to focus on. If you intend to explore and achieve level 3 in an area of technical practice, please discuss it with me as soon as you start working on this, so that we can aim at a shared understanding of the direction you are going in. Note also that to achieve level 2 you also need to demonstrate level 1, and that to achieve level 3 you also need to demonstrate levels 2 and 1. Here are zoomed out descriptions of the expectations for each level in each technical area (links to further details for levels 1 and 2 to be provided soon!):

Mechanics

level 1: collisions as triggers (maze transitions, collecting objects, scores)
level 2: objects that move (projectiles, moving terrain, following)
level 3: branching paths, co-evolving states (or something else ambitious)

3D Assets

level 1: textured 3D models with collision shapes
level 2: rig and animate a character model with functioning walk/idle animations
level 3: generative textures, inverse kinematics, 3D scanning, motion capture, water, fire, mirrors, shader programming (or something else ambitious)

2D User Interfaces (UI)

level 1: 2D titles, transitions, and overlays (e.g. score/HP display)
level 2: inventories and popup dialogues
level 3: animated UI (or something else ambitious)

Sound

level 1: triggered sound effects and positional ambient sounds
level 2: sound banks with random/generative variation
level 3: adaptive sound tracks (or something else ambitious)

Camera and Control

level 1: 2D and almost 2D motion in 3D spaces
level 2: 1st-person with mouselook, keyboard, game controller, skybox, no edges
level 3: independent cameras, context-sensitive popups, temporary "loss of control", flight, swimming, scopes (or something else ambitious)