What should deliverables for a school game project be?

Question

I am planning on making a 3D hack-n-slash RPG with Unity for a school project. I have to come up with a project proposal. I am suppose to identify project deliverables.

I cannot think of what "deliverables" would be for this kind of game. I am hoping someone can give me some examples to get me started?

Would they be art work or characters? Content? Story? Core features? Technical requirements? What technology I am using? I am not sure.

Answer 1

I'd suggest you structure each of your milestone deliverables as a simple bulleted list of clearly-demonstrable features your game will have by the end of the milestone. For example, perhaps your first deliverable will involve a game where:

• The player can walk around a static world.
• The player can engage in "combat" with creatures (who "die" when walked into).

Whereas your second might be:

• The player can proceed through character creation (picking a race/gender/class).
• Creatures have health and may require multiple hits to kill.
• Creatures may drop items upon death.
• The player can pick up items by walking over them.

And the third:

• Character creation randomly generates player stats based on class and race.
• The player has health.
• Creatures will approach the player if he or she is close enough and attempt to attack.
• The player can die if his or her health is reduced to 0.
• Players can equip items in their inventory.

And so on. The purpose of a deliverable is almost always to demonstrate to some outside party what progress has been made -- since this is a school project that's almost certainly the case. External parties will not necessarily be intimately familiar with the details of the development between any two successive deliverables, so providing clear and understandable goals makes their job -- evaluating your progress -- easier. They will appreciate that.

It will also help you, because its gives you goals and a plan, and helps you identify rough high-level dependencies, and let you check and measure your own progress. I use techniques very similar to this to schedule blocks of work for teams in my actual, real job making commercial games.

Answer 2

Project deliverables are alpha, beta, gold in essence with milestone dates.

The best way to manage your project is to use scrum development process or the waterfall method of scrum which is a loose variation of scrum. Having a burn down chart, and a to do list so everything is in order will help you out in the long run.

As far as your deliverables, they should focus mainly on the games game mechanics, and dynamics. Aethetics play a big role in the design of the game. Such as evoking emotion, creating engaging storyline with the player, and the visual and auditory sounds that are involved with the design.

Planning : Plan your entire game out.

PRE-Alpha : The best way to test your game is to make an analog version of it first.

Alpha : Playable mechanics such as walking, jumping, hitting. Basic art is in place. The game is playable.

Beta : More playable / refined mechanics for walking, jumping, hitting. Sound should be delivered in the beta milestone. Sound shouldn't be finished, but in place. The games mechanics should also be in place. The player can die, respawn, collect, and pickup items. Finalize art, etc.

Gold : Finished version of your game. Everything is polished and fixed up. Working, and all very few bugs. The game is pretty much ready to ship.

Final version : Everything is polished, fixed, and there are no bugs that are present. You may find bugs later down the road because everyone plays differently. The game is now officially ready to ship.

This is how my school thesis went for four months, Alpha = 1 month, Beta = 1 month, Gold = 1 Month, Final-Version = 1 Month.