Due date: Friday, September 24th by 11:59pm
This assignment focuses on the audiovisual assets that must be assembled for your Flash/Flixel game prototype. Your team will be responsible for identifying, selecting and/or creating all of the content that will be used.
Don't worry if no one on your team is an experienced artist or sound designer! You will be graded more on your ideas and effort than on your execution.
The assignment has six objectives:
Write a short statement (100 to 250 words) describing the artistic vision for your game. Describe the motifs, styles, colors, sounds and textures in any way you see fit. Feel free to reference movies, games, places or anything else that may evoke the feel you wish to capture with your content. Rough sketches of characters or settings may also be used, but are not required.
Your description should be clear enough that, if you were to hand it to several independently contracted artists, they would all return with similar work.
Identify all of the assets that you will need for the final version of your prototype: sprites, tiles, sound effects, music, icons, etc. Fully document the functional requirements for these assets (sprite size, number of frames and types of animations, length of sound loops, etc) with as much detail as you can. It's okay if the specifications are just best-guesses, and it's okay if you specify ranges instead of specific values.
There is no specific length requirement for the asset list, as each game will have different content needs. There is no specific format, either, but the document must be organized and readable (prose, spreadsheet, or whatever works). In all cases the assets should be named as clearly as possible. It may be appropriate to include a short description of the expected style or purpose of the asset.
Gather together all of the audiovisual assets you will need to build your prototype.
Your team is unlikely to have time to generate all the content yourselves, so you'll have to scrounge around to find the files you need. In the Resources section below, there are several libraries that you may find useful. Feel free to use other content, either as-is or modified, so long as you accurately document where the content sources came from and how they are licensed, as appropriate. Failure to do so may be a violation of academic honesty.
As you collect your assets, add their filenames to your asset list. Make a note if your content falls short of your requirements for some reason.
When you're done, there should be an actual filename associated with every item on your asset list.
Your team is also responsible for creating at least 40 completely original assets for your prototype. These can be tiles, icons, sound effects or any combination of at least 40 assets that fit your functional requirements.
Don't panic. The definition of an "asset" here is quite liberal. For example, one sprite that can face in four directions with five frames of animation per direction is 5x4=20 frames of animation, and each frame counts as an asset.
If you not sure if something counts as a separate asset? Ask me.
The artistic quality of your team's artwork is less important than the fact that the assets are your team's original creation. Do not turn in any copyrighted images or third-party work for this part of the assignment. Even an original piece of art or sound clip that was modified is not appropriate for this part of the project. The work must be completely original.
5. Submit your plan and assets
Your final submission will consist of an asset plan document, and a folder containing your 40 original assets.
Your asset plan document must contain the following elements:
Clearly label each element of your document so it can be found (and graded!) easily.
When your document and original assets are ready, zip them together into a single archive file. Name the file:
teamname.zip
where "teamname" is the name of your project team.
Use TurnIn to submit your work.
All team members will share the same grade.
100-90. The asset plan more than satisfies the length and content requirements of the project. All required elements (noted above) are present, complete and detailed. The document is well organized and highly readable. Additional graphical elements (logos, sketches) enhance the document. The original assets exhibit an unusually high degree of effort, thoughtfulness, creativity and/or ingenuity.
89-80. The asset plan satisfies the length and content requirements of the project. All required elements are present and complete. The document is organized and readable. The original assets exhibit substantial effort, thoughtfulness, creativity and/or ingenuity.
79-70. The asset plan minimally satisfies the content requirements of the project. All required elements are present, but incomplete or inadequate. The document is somewhat organized, but difficult to read in places. The original assets exhibit marginal effort, thoughfulness, creativity and/or ingenuity.
69-60. The asset plan falls short of the length and content requirements in a few places. Some of the required elements are missing, or do not include meaningful information. The document is poorly organized and/or difficult to read. The original assets are of minor scope, or exhibit perfunctory effort, thoughfulness, creativity and/or ingenuity..
59-0. The asset plan does not satisfy the length and content requirements. Required elements are missing or incomplete. The document is disorganized and difficult to read. The original assets exhibit little or no evidence of effort, thoughfulness, creativity and/or ingenuity.
Five (5) points will be deducted from your grade if the submitted file does not meet the filename specification or other documentation is missing, as noted above.
For the art assets, remember the WPI policy on academic honesty! Attribute all borrowed assets. Do not call someone else's work your own. The official WPI Academic Honesty policy can be accessed here.
Game Maker resource packs - sources of art from Game Maker. You might check out the "Tools" section for some free tools that might be useful.
Ari Feldman's SpriteLib - download the free SpriteLib GPL written by Ari Feldman with many sprites that have potential.
Molotov.Nu - page with many different sprite resources, e.g. the famous tile sets by Hermann Hillmann.
Reiner's Tilesets - a site with a huge number of attractive tilesets and animated characters. And they are free.
Midi World - many different midi files can be found here.
FlashKit sound effects - a site with a huge number of sound effects.
Video Game Music Archive - contains midi files of lots of game music.
GameDev.net - many sprites available (and other stuff if you look around).