The CSE@UTA Marketing and Outreach Project

Maverick Paintball Game

Customer: J. C. M. Tiernan, Director of Outreach, CSE@UTA

Purpose: Create a fun attractive computer game that can be burned on CD to send to potential students to positively influence their decision to come to UTA and particularly to CSE. Potentially the game might also be hosted on the UTA website for network play.

The game should not have graphic violence but will be in the form of a first-person single player cartoon paintball shoot-em-up.

The player will be represented as Sam Maverick the UTA mascot using the recently revised Sam Maverick cartoon logo as the basis for the player’s design

Quasi see-through CSE@UTA logo in corner at all times (like TV station logos)

The game setting will be the UTA campus “cartoonized” including but not limited to the following locations:

All building exteriors

Hall of Flags

Rady room

Nedderman, Woolf, and ELB detailed

Architecture garden

Cooper bridges

Pickard Hall (the “triangle” building)

Getting to the third floor of the music building using the stairs

Maverick Stadium (oops, the name is changed but I don’t remember it)

Science and Tech Library

Where the flowers bloom in the spring

Fountains

Dorms

ARRI? (space warp to it?)

The game will highlight unique features of UTA including but not limited to:

SAE race car

Wheelchair basketball team, Movin’ Mavs

Glass blowing (only such program in the state)

Nanofab

The paintball targets will include but not be limited to:

Longhorns

Mustangs

Horned frogs

Grumpy looking Corps members (?)

which should be rendered in colors appropriate to the school they are associated with

The player should get points (or extra paintballs or a fancier paintball gun or?) for finding certain locations (and hitting something there with a paintball?), for interacting with the highlighted UTA features (with paintballs?), and for successful paintball shots on opposing schools mascots roaming the campus.

Implementers should decide how to reward levels of achievement - does the player “win” or do they just advance to higher levels?

Implementers should add elements to the game in addition to those specified above that will enhance the player’s interest in CSE@UTA. These could be “teasers” or info about research areas (“Oh no, you’ve blundered into the Robotics Lab and caused the robot lawnmower to malfunction. It’s after you!!”) or mentions of events (Programming Contest, E-Week, RoPro, etc.)

Implementers should NOT assume a highly skilled user or a user who is very familiar with game playing. There should be some facility to play with very limited skill and still get points and be successful. (Paint bazookas?) ALL players should be able to be successful with some level of the game. (Maybe the lowest level is a scavenger hunt or something where the items/targets don’t move.)

Quality of graphics is very important

Quality of game is very important

Ease of use is very important

FUN is very important! (A bad video game is worse than no game at all for this application)

If this project turns out well, the implementers will have their names on the game credits and the indication that they are undergrads in the CSE@UTA program doing their senior design project. This credit would be something you could put on your resume since the game will be promoted to many potential students, used by the CSE@UTA dept. and potentially used by the university.