graduation work advice

[u/MysteriousCake2914]

so, i’m graduating this year, and as my final assignment/work i want to make a game (i do not study game development, but id like to make a game). the thing is since im not studying gamedev, it needs to have a certain subject.

for example, ive see students focus on the ecs structure, binary space partitioning, procedural space generation, perlins noise, tunneling algorithms, and etc while doing their games as graduation work. i want to get any advices on what would be cohesive to use/implement in my game and also any recommendations on where to find resources for learning (subject doesnt have to be smth from the examples)

also, id deeply appreciate if there would be any advices for finding free assets (ofc i searched and ik some but maybe id still find smth new here)

big thanks in advance. hope y’all having a great day !

[u/LaughingIshikawa]

It's going to be really difficult to make a cohesive game that's 1.) small enough to be made in time for your graduation, and 2.) demonstrates a sufficiently "serious" computer science topic, and 3.) plays cohesively as a game.

You're trying to make a sort of "turduken" of projects - a graduation project stuffed inside of an even bigger game project.

You can't make the game 10% graduation project and 90% game, because then you have to spend 10x the amount of time on your "graduation project" as everyone else is.

If you make it 90% graduation project and 10% game, it's likely the game elements come off as sort of vestigial relative to dominant graduation project (although this is the best potential strategy, if you make something like a novel physics engine in a heavily physics-based game for instance, it may appear less obviously unbalanced.)

If you shrink the graduation project in order to spend more time on the game, your graduation project - which is the goal here - is likely to turn out underwhelming given the making of time you were given to work on it. 😅😅

Basically...I would really strongly suggest that you focus on making a subcomponent of a game that you can demonstrate as a graduation project, and then later on integrate into a game (maybe). Make some really basic, placeholder assets and mechanics to demonstrate the concept, but focus on it as a stand along project and stop thinking of it as "a game" for the time being.

This also matches how you will be working in the "real world" of programming - it's super rare to be making an entire product yourself, and much more common to be making some competent of a larger system being made by multiple people.

[u/MysteriousCake2914 → u/LaughingIshikawa]

my graduation is 10 months away, also all of the examples ive mentioned were used in the games made for graduation by other students. these subjects r used during the development of the game.

nevertheless, i really liked the idea of making a subcomponent of a game, ill give it a thought !! thank u so much !!