1. Introduction It is commonly acknowledged that the market for mobile phones has reached a level of saturation. Thus, there is a real need for applications which encourage adoption of new mobile devices and services especially on online games for mobile phone. There is also a growing importance placed by mobile manufactures on embedded games using J2ME technology, there is a real need for highly skilled people to help exploit this industry. Building a high quality game is a surprisingly difficult and challenging process. This training provides a fundamental hand-on experience of mobile phone game design and implementation using J2ME in order to let students to learn the many concepts and issues that bring about these challenges. 2. Objectives The major objective of this 4-week group project is to develop a mobile phone game using J2ME of reasonable size and complexity as a team effort. This project is designed to give you experience in: the stages of the game development process. the various issues that arise in game design. the issues and trade-offs in game implementation. developing and implementing play-testing strategies for games. 3. Pre-cursor This project is intended for experienced Java programmers who would like to learn how to develop mobile games using J2ME. The pre-cursor of this project is EE3206 (Java Programming and Applications), that means students must have taken the course of EE3206 in order to allow choosing this project. To make sure all the students have sufficient experience on J2ME programming, students are required to complete five J2ME lab exercises in the first four days of the training. 4. Grouping Most of the real-world Information Engineering projects are almost always carried out by teams; students are required to work on a proposed game project in a group of 5 to 6 students. Groups are entirely responsible for their own interaction and for ensuring that everyone does their fair share --- they are empowered to rate each other on quantity and quality of effort, and that will be considered in assigning individual grades on the projects. Student groups are expected to complete their project during the four weeks training period. 5. Game Project Requirements The project is intended to be open-ended, to give you the freedom to explore the game development process in a manner that best suits your own background and interests. Consequently, it is up to you to decide: what genre of game you wish to create. what features your game should include. what mobile phone you wish to develop the game on. and so on. Here are some suggested types of game for your reference: Role-playing adventure game Card Games: Big-2 Educational Mobile Game - VTech Products Shoot-em-up Maze game 6. The Grame Proposal Each group is required to propose its own mobile game, thus each project group is required to submit a mobile game proposal on or before 5.00PM on Friday of the first week and present the proposal on second week's Monday afterenoon. In general, the purpose of a game proposal is to get approval to proceed with the development of a game. In this training, the proposal is intended to give sufficient information to provide some early feedback on the scope and content of your game before you are too committed to your initial ideas. This should help your game be more successful, and earn you a higher grade. The proposal is not intended to be a lengthy and detailed document but it could provide enough information for someone to get a feel for what your game will be all about. Your proposal must not exceed 25 pages. For this training, your game proposal must include the following sections and information. (a) The Team and Job Division List the members of your group as well as what their intended role in the project is. Roles include designers, programmers, testers, documentation, as well as people in charge of story development, graphic design, artwork, music, and sound effects. (b) The High-level Concept This is a short description of what your game is all about. It should interest and excite the reader, and set your game apart from others. (c) The Story If your game has a plot, summarize it. Introduce the main character, identify the problems faced by the character, describe any villains in the game, and explain how the player will ultimately overcome all of this. (d) Game Play Mechanics This is a section describing what the player does in the game. It is generally a genre statement, with an explanation of new twists that your game provides. (e) Target Audience This is a statement as to who the intended players of the game are. Is it targeted towards children, everyone, or a particular niche of players (e.g sports fans)? (f) Target Platform Here, you identify the target platform on which your game will be played. This should include mobile phone model, hardware requirements, operating system requirements, and any additional software requirements. (g) The Features Summary This is the list of features that will make your game exceptional. Write this section as if you are writing the text that goes on the back of a typical game box, or in some other kind of advertisement. (h) Risk Analysis This section lays out all of the potential problems that you foresee happening during development, and how you plan to deal with such risks. For example, if you are trying some new software tool or development technique, problems could occur if things do not work out as planned. (i) Work Schedule List out your working schedule of the 4 weeks training. 7. Schedule Please identify which lab you are going to work in and download the required lab manuals. Please print in advance. Week No. Date Activities Download 0 24 May 2004 (Wednesday) - Briefing with introduction of projects - Meeting your lab supervisors - 1 12 June 2006 (Monday) - Lab1: Installation of J2ME Development Kits (Morning Session) - Lab2: J2ME Basic High-Level User Interface Programming (Afternoon Session) lab1 lab2 images 1 13 June 2006 (Tuesday) - Lab3: Creating J2ME User Interface (Morning Session) - Understanding the selected project (Afternoon Session) lab3 1 14 June 2006 (Wednesday) - Lab4: Manipulating Graphics with J2ME (Morning Session) - Understanding the selected project (Afternoon Session) lab4 1 15 June 2006 (Thursday) - Lab5: To Write A Simjple Action Game using J2ME (Morning Session) - Define the specifications of the final products (Afternoon Session) lab5 1 16 June 2006 (Friday) - Submit a written project proposal with work schedule - 2 19 June 2006 (Monday) - Proposal Presentation (15 min.) at 2:00PM. - 2 20 June 2006 to 23 June 2006 - Project Development - 3 26 June 2006 to 30 June 2006 - Project Development - Progress Presentation (10 min.) on Tuesday at 2:00PM. - 4 2 July 2006 to 6 July 2006 - Project Development - 4 7 July 2006 (Friday) - Submit Project Final Report - Formal project presentation with demonstration (15 min.) for project competition - 8. Project Deliverables (a) Presentation and Demo: The presentation should be a professional delivery, carefully rehearsed to fit into the 15 minutes allowed, with clear graphics, audible speech/audio, and other forms of multimedia as appropriate. There should be a brief explanation of the project goals and of the history of the effort, comments on problems faced and lessons learned, and a demonstration or description of the final project deliverables. The project presentations are arranged at last day of the four weeks training period. (b) Documentation and CD-R: A written report with development menu and user menu is required to describe the technical details of your product. Also, there must be a section for users, saying how the project should be used. (In some cases this may be limited to be a one-page handout or flier, if user instructions and help are part of the project.) Every project must include discussion for those who may need to maintain, revise, or extend the project. This must describe all raw materials (tapes, disk files, etc.) used, how they were transformed, all intermediate files or results, documentation of any programs and their building or use, and give locations (physical or on computer file systems). A knowledgeable person reading this should be able to carry on the work or make revisions if there are problems. A one-page abstract/executive summary also must be included. In addition, all the documentation and software developed in the project must store on a CD-R and submitted with the final report. 9. Instructor Po, Lai-Man, Email: eelmpo@cityu.edu.hk Room: G6414, Phone: 27887779 10. Technician in-charge: Mr. Cheng, C Y, Email: cycheng@ee.cityu.edu.hk, Phone: 2788-7060 Mr. Kan, W K, Email: eewkkan@cityu.edu.hk, Phone: 2788-9933 11. Location Student Terminal Room (P1406) Last Updated: 16 May 2006 Home