Week 6 — Juice It
GAME 1303 · Tuesday, September 29, 2026 · 9:00 AM – 1:50 PM
Same mechanic, same values, ten times better. Today is entirely about feedback — the 200 milliseconds around the input that decide whether your game feels like a wet sponge or a rifle bolt.
This week at a glance
| Block | Time | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Lecture | 9:00 – 10:15 | Design topic + engine features |
| Exercise | 10:30 – 11:45 | Ex 4 — Juice It — 2 pts, submitted today |
| Lab | 12:00 – 1:50 | Work on your semester project |
Before class
- Bring 3–4 sound effects. Make them in jsfxr — ten seconds each, and it's how a lot of shipped indie games got their audio.
- Bring your Ex 2 project.
Lecture topics
| Section | Topics |
|---|---|
| 001 — Unity 6.x | Sprite animation and Animator · Particles / VFX Graph · SoundPlayer, ScreenShake, HitFlash · Hit-stop |
| 002 — Unreal 5.8 | Paper2D flipbooks and animation · Niagara · Audio cues, camera shake, material flash · Hit-stop |
Exercise — Ex 4 — Juice It
Five layers of feedback on your Ex 2 verb, then subtract the ones that aren't earning their place.
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 the feedback layers to your own game.
- Audio is 2 points of the Week 15 rubric and the most-skipped points in the course. Start collecting sounds now.
Due this week
| What | When | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Ex 4 — Juice It | end of class | 2 pts |
Run the matching tab of the course checklist before you submit. Every box on it is a graded criterion.
Next week
Ex 5 — Space & Pace. Bring paper and a pen — the first ten minutes are a hand-drawn beat chart.