Week 15 · Ship it: lock, publish, rehearse — FMX 320 Animation for Games

By the end of this week you can

Declare a build locked: no more features, only fixes that a stranger would hit in the first two minutes.
Publish a finished itch.io page — build, screenshots, controls, a sentence that sells it — and confirm it downloads and runs cold.
Cut a 60–90 second trailer from your Sequencer shots with the Movie Render Queue.
Run your showcase station: install, controls sheet, one-minute pitch, reset between players.
Direct an agent to audit your launch and find what you stopped seeing.

Mon 2:00 · Brief The lock

Every unfinished game has a feature that was "almost there" the week before the deadline. This morning you draw the line: what ships is what exists at 2:00 today, plus fixes.

Locked means locked

A lock is a promise to yourself that the build stops changing shape. From now on the only edits allowed are ones a first-time player would notice in the first two minutes — a crash, a soft-lock, a control that does the wrong thing, a collectible that can't be collected. Everything else goes in the process book under what I would build next, which is a section the crit actually asks about.

The stranger test

Your showcase guests owe you nothing. They will not read a README, they will press the wrong button first, and they will judge the whole semester by whether the game starts. So the ship list is written from their side of the table: does it launch cold, does the first screen say what to press, can it be finished, can it be reset for the next person without you touching a keyboard.

Why the page matters as much as the build

The itch.io page is the first thing anyone sees — a portfolio reviewer, a classmate, a stranger at 2 am. A page with a real screenshot, a two-line description, a controls list and a working download reads as a finished game. The same build behind an empty page reads as a student exercise. Twenty minutes on the page is the best-leveraged twenty minutes of the term.

State of the Art · Finish is a skill

Most student games never ship; most professional ones ship late. The last ten percent — packaging, page, trailer, the thing a stranger sees first — is a discipline you can practice, and this week is the practice. Discussion: what did you cut this week, and was it the right thing?

itch.io creator docs

Mon 2:45 · Guided lab Lock the build, publish for real

By the end of Monday your itch.io page is public-ready and the build on it is the build you will show.

Close the must-fix list
Work down last week's triage. Fix only what's on the must-fix list; if something new turns up, ask whether a stranger would hit it in two minutes. If not, it goes in the process book, not the build.
Package the locked build
Platforms → Windows → Package Project, Shipping configuration, to an empty folder. Read the Output Log: zero red lines is the bar. Name the folder with the date and -final; this is the one that ships.
Cold-run it
Copy the packaged folder to a machine that has never opened your project — a classmate's laptop is ideal — unzip, and run the .exe. Launches, first screen says what to press, playable to the end, quits cleanly. If any of those fail, that is the only work left today.
Finish the itch.io page
Upload the final zip to your draft project, replacing last week's. Add three screenshots (one is the first thing a player sees), a two-sentence description, a Controls section, and set the platform tag. Keep visibility on Restricted until the crit, then switch to Public afterwards — or go Public now if you want it in your portfolio today.
Download it as a stranger
Open your own page in a private window, download, unzip, run. This is the exact path a guest or a reviewer takes; if it works here, it works.
Write the controls sheet
One page, large type: the goal in one sentence, the controls, how to reset. It sits next to your station at the showcase so you can talk to one guest while another plays.

Wed 2:00 · Agent lab The launch audit

You have stopped seeing your own game. An agent hasn't. Give it everything and let it find the gaps — then you decide which ones matter with two days left.

Prompt 1 · Audit the launch

Here is my packaged build's file listing and Output Log from the final package: [paste]. Here is the text of my itch.io page: [paste]. Here is my AILOG.md: [paste]. Audit all three as a release manager would. List: anything in the log that could fail on a cold machine; anything a first-time visitor to the page cannot work out (controls, requirements, what the game is); gaps in the log where a week's agent work has no entry or no review note. Rank by how likely a stranger is to hit it at the showcase.

Treat the list as a checklist, not orders. The agent will flag things that don't matter for a two-minute showcase play; you know what a guest will actually do. Fix the top three, log the rest under known issues on the itch.io page — a game that names its own rough edges reads as finished, not broken.

Prompt 2 · The one-minute pitch

Here is my process book draft and the description from my itch.io page: [paste]. Draft a one-minute spoken pitch for a showcase guest who has never seen the game: what it is, what to do, and the one design decision I am proudest of. Plain speech, no jargon, under 150 words.

Say it out loud, twice, with a timer. Then rewrite it in your own words — the agent's draft is the shape, not the voice. You will give this pitch a dozen times on Tuesday.

Before you call it done

The locked build is on itch.io, downloads in a private window, and runs cold.
The page has screenshots, a description, controls, and a known-issues line.
The trailer is cut (60–90 s) and linked from the itch.io page.
Add the final AILOG.md entry: the audit, what you fixed, what you logged as known.
Drop the final zip in the class share. The package you submit today is the package that gets graded.

Wed 3:10 · Crit / share Dress rehearsal

We set the room up as it will be on Tuesday: every station running, controls sheet beside it, trailer looping on a second screen where you have one. Then we rotate — each of you plays a neighbor's build cold for three minutes while its maker gives the one-minute pitch to someone else and resets the station without touching their keyboard. Whatever breaks in the rehearsal is the last thing you fix. Whatever confuses your classmate will confuse a guest. You leave knowing the showcase will work, because you have already run it once.

Homework — due at the showcase, Tue Dec 15

Task	Deliverable
Fix the top rehearsal findings; re-package and re-upload only if you had to.	The final build on itch.io — the one you will show.
Finish the process book: references, iterations, playtest notes, what you'd build next.	The process book, exported to PDF, dropped in the class share.
Write the one-page reflection on the full-semester AI log.	`AILOG.md` complete, with the reflection at the top.
Arrive at 1:15 on Tuesday and have your station running by 1:30.	You, your build, your controls sheet, your pitch.

Resources

itch.io creator docs — page setup, uploads, visibility, and the butler tool if you want automated uploads.
Unreal packaging docs — Shipping vs Development, cooking, and the Output Log.
Movie Render Queue — rendering your Sequencer shots to video for the trailer.
Unreal Sequencer — cuts, camera moves, and the shot list you built in Week 13.