Video Game Design and Programming

As others have said, watch the lectures at 1.5-2x speed. The content in them is good though, there's a lot of really interesting stuff. Unfortunately I do think a lot of references that he makes will be lost on folks who aren't into gaming. There's a LOT of "history of gaming" style stuff, which makes sense when studying game design, but is much easier to grasp if you are into gaming and so have some context as to who Valve or id Software are.

The project is what you make of it, but is easily the biggest time sink in the course. Coordinating with teammates is hard in Unity (merge conflicts are basically unsolvable, so you have to work on different things), so a lot of cognitive overhead comes from just that aspect of the project. As for actually learning Unity, yeah, you could just do it yourself - but Dr. Wilson gives some assignments that help introduce you to the engine, which can be intimidating. And I really do believe there's some value in working on a game with other people in a team to see how they do things, even if there is a lot of overhead in the coordination. Also, being forced to go through the process of making a game from start to finish, with all of the steps in between (alpha, playtesting, etc) is really a good exercise in forcing you to do steps you might want to ignore if you're just playing around on your own.

All in all, not a hard class, but you can really go wild with the project if you want, which could end up taking a lot of time. Take this class if you want a semi-structured excuse to play around with Unity for several weeks/months, and if you want some interesting discussion of game design philosophy.

I have a bachelor's degree in CS, been working as a software dev for about a year, and this is my fourth course. Honestly, this class is one of those classes that you could easily spend anywhere from 0–5 hours a week to 15+ depending on how deep you want to go.

The course is made up of 4 personal milestones, a group project (almost 60% of your grade), and a small 10% quiz, that’s pretty much it. Imo, it’s easier than SDP and probably one of the easiest foundational courses (not counting the general electives).

The milestone projects are all guided with really clear instructions, so it’s actually kinda hard not to get the points. The group project is the main thing, but I feel like I’ve got plenty of time for it. Overall, I’d say this course is pretty chill and interesting, low effort if you want it to be, or medium effort if you really want to dive in.

This is an awesome course if you're interested in learning how to independently develop and publish video games. The professor is awesome and passionate about the field of Video Game Development.

My main advice:

1.) Form a group as soon as the forum thread opens. Proactive people who are on there tend to be better performers so you're more likely to match with stronger teammates if you're proactive in your teammate search.

2.) Understand that the course project is for developing the skills to make a 3D third person game. It is not necessarily to make the game you want or even a fun game. The project is for your learning and skill development so you can make your dream game later. There are a lot of less glamorous yet essential skills that need to be explored in the project that you will benefit from. It's important to understand this as you plan, develop, and compromise within your group around the game's design so you don't become overly attached to the project. At the end of the day the project is there so everyone can practice their skills. I would recommend forming a group with this understanding.

3.) The course videos can be long. However, I recommend watching every minute of them if you truly are interested in video game development as they contain a lot of awesome ideas that I found inspiring for my own game ideas. I would recommend watching them efficiently, however, because the speech speed is a bit slow. You can use this recommended link to see how to modify the video speed beyond 2X using javascript: https://thejaymo.net/2023/05/14/194-how-to-watch-youtube-faster-than-2x-speed/

4.) Watch videos at faster speed and search the txt version of the video transcripts (the transcripts are available for download in the video attachments) for key terms to re-read and re-watch key sections when taking the quizzes. I personally enjoyed watching the videos at 3-3.5X speed while taking notes on them. This made the hours of video in some of the modules manageable while still absorbing the content.

5.) Meet with your group regularly (weekly) and maintain an active group chat.

6.) Github merging of Unity scene files sucks. The short of it is you basically can only overwrite each other's work within a scene so there is no smart merge functionality. The best approach is to have only one person making changes to a scene file at a time. If you need to work in parallel, simply make a copy of the scene and then make your additions to that. Once you've pulled your teammate's additions to the target scene you can then manually copy and paste your changes into the target scene and commit them. It's not great, but it works for small teams.

As a gamer, this course was a bit of a letdown. You are better off learning Unity and Game dev on your own. Despite an A, I wouldn't say this is a class you want to pair with another because you definitely have to devote time to learn Unity/C++.

The lectures were hours long, boring, and mostly irrelevant to the quizzes, which were open-book. I dreaded watching lectures even on 2x speed. The lectures were about random tidbits of video game history and the only needed info are the brief demos for the milestone assignments. The Unity milestones assignments came in a slab of text, with needed detective work in the lectures. Get ready to be docked points because you missed a sentence in a 6 page PDF of text. The tutorials by Unity and random Youtube videos taught me more.

The group project was hit-or-miss depending on your team, but the vague requirements and poor documentation made it frustrating and disconnected from the course material. You can make any 3rd person video game. I had a great team that overall made the class enjoyable for me. It's really fun to watch the game trailers made by peers

Overall, the course wasn't necessarily hard, but not very educational, it's fun learning about how much work goes into a video game. This course was not a first pick for me but was more appealing than the other courses in OMSCS.

As someone passionate about video games, I found this course immensely disappointing. First, the lectures. They're god awful. There's about 10 hours worth of lectures per week, and all of them are just the instructor talking about the history of video games, and you're not even tested on 90% of the lectures material. Additionally, the quizzes related to the lectures are only worth 10% of your grade. I actually gave up watching the lectures because of how boring they are, and took all of the quizzes in one week with the lecture slides up and got an 80% on all of the quizzes. Most of the things in the quizzes were either common sense or could be easily found via the lecture slides or a google search (quizzes were open book).

Next, the team project. If you've got a good team, I have no doubt that this would go relatively well. My group was decent. There were some frustrations for sure, but the real complaint I have here is the lack of documentation. The requirements for the game are vague in a lot of areas, and it's not clear how it's supposed to relate back to the course material. Overall, it didn't feel like I was learning much by making the game with my group, just trying to satisfy requirements.

Finally, the only reason this course got a 2/5 instead a 1/5, is the milestones. For the first month of the course, you'll complete milestones in Unity - these are directly related to course material and give very thorough instructions on how to complete them. They're phenomenal. I learned a TON from the milestones. I genuinely wish the majority of the course used this methodology.

Course is not difficult at all, should be an easy A. Don't watch the lectures unless the quiz structures changed since the writing of this review - just read the lecture slides.

Lectures are very long. Watch them at 2x speed and tune in whenever he talks about something interesting, which is surprisingly often if you're passionate about games like I am.

Quizzes are open book and quite easy. You get two attempts and keep the average of the two. If you watched the lectures, then go with your first instinct.

The Milestone assignments are not difficult. Step by step instructions are laid out and there is often an associated video specifically for the assignment where the professor walks you through it.

The group project for me was... tough. I spent a lot of time working on it and stressed out about it for most weeks during the latter half of the semester. I learned a lot about Unity though, that's for sure. I found the process of developing different aspects of the game in Unity quite enjoyable, but the team aspect just left me a nervous wreck.

I'd give the non-group part of the class a 5/5 but the team part a 2/5. I even had a pretty good group. I just really dislike having to rely and coordinate with others. Probably would have been my favorite course in the program if it used an individual project instead.

The class teaches the fundamentals of game design well, and the lectures are very thorough (sometimes too thorough). The individual projects are very easy and the group project is the only real challenge in this course.

Having a good, communicative team is crucial in order to better pace yourself with the group project. I would suggest to proactively try to find a group instead of waiting to be assigned one, as I feel the chance of getting teammates that don't communicate well (different timezones) or aren't as hard working is higher.

The meat of this class is in the final group project where you actually get to build an entire video game in the Unity engine. Your mileage will vary heavily based on how ambitious and competent your group is. We were lucky to have an excellent team and managed to build a Soulslike adventure game that everyone was quite proud of.

That being said, the workload is going to hinge almost entirely on the scope that you choose for the final project. You could easily choose something relatively simple and get away with a few hours per week. However, I'd recommend going big--how many opportunities are you really going to have to build a video game??

This is a wonderful class and one of my favorites so far. Its super fun and by the end of the course you have everything you need to start building unity games. The homework's (milestones) are easy as the Professor Wilson guides you through most of them and the bulk of the grade is the project. Learning C++ on the fly didn't prove to be too difficult.

While I enjoyed the class, I was unfortunately assigned with a group that did very little work. My most valuable advice is to search for a group early on with similar ambitions as yourself or else you'll end up doing the bulk of the work. Individual projects would have been cool but the TA's mentioned this didn't work in the past for some reason.