This quarter CSE 481 will not be building games. Instead, we'll be building software of use to real clients - people who have ideas for software that would be of use to them, but who are otherwise unaffiliated with the course. You can view the proposals by following the appropriate View link to the left. (A password is required in all cases.)

Here is the basic outline for the course activities:

• As in the past, we'll be organized into teams of five or so developers.
• The project proposals to be worked on will be chosen by the students.
• Nearly all decisions about development will be left up to the teams.
• Each team will consist of CSE developers and students from Technical Communications 407. The latter will help with program management, client requirements, and documentation.

The idea for this version of the course is to enhance the value of the experience, both to the people in the course and to others around the University. For us, we get exposure to creativity in other disciplines (have a look at the proposals) and the more complete view of the software build process that comes from having (potentially non-CS technical) people relying on the outcome. For our clients, they get tools that will help advance their work but whose construction is neither their focus nor their expertise.

There should be a lot of satisfaction and fun in building the projects this quarter. Sure, nothing blows up (at least not by design), but no game produced in this course ever had the potential for even 1, much less 10,000's, of real users upon completion.