Week 4 — Rules & States

GAME 1303 · Tuesday, September 15, 2026 · 9:00 AM – 1:50 PM

A verb alone is a toy. Today you add stakes: a goal, a failure, and a consequence you choose on purpose.

This week at a glance

Block	Time	What happens
Lecture	9:00 – 10:15	Design topic + engine features
Exercise	10:30 – 11:45	Ex 3 — Rules & States — 2 pts, submitted today
Lab	12:00 – 1:50	Work on your semester project

Before class

One Sheet due tonight, 11:59 PM in Canvas. One page, one side, PDF.
Bring your Ex 2 project — today builds directly onto it.

Lecture topics

Section	Topics
001 — Unity 6.x	Colliders and triggers · TriggerZone and UnityEvents · GameStateManager · Scene reload
002 — Unreal 5.8	Collision and overlap events · BP_TriggerZone and dispatchers · BP_GameState · Level restart

Exercise — Ex 3 — Rules & States

Goal trigger, hazard, win/lose/restart — plus a state diagram you draw first.

Open the version for your section:

Worth 2 points: one for Implementation (it builds and runs, the feature works), one for the Design decision (a deliberate, defensible choice beyond the defaults). Due at the end of the class period — late work earns the Implementation point only.

Lab goals

Apply today's rules to your own game.
Prepare for next week's milestone — a playable build of your core mechanic, demoed live.
Build it in lab. Do not build it for the first time next Tuesday morning.

Due this week

What	When	Points
Ex 3 — Rules & States	end of class	2 pts
One Sheet	11:59 PM, Canvas	5 pts

Run the matching tab of the course checklist before you submit. Every box on it is a graded criterion.

Next week

Week 5 is Milestone 2 — Core Game Mechanic, 5 points, demoed live. It's Ex 2 plus Ex 3 applied to your own game. Bring a build, not a project.