CS426 Game Programming II Dan Fleck

Why games?  While the ideas in this course are demonstrated programming games, they are useful in all parts of computer science  Other types of “games”: Serious games, educational games, training games, fitness games, (more?)  Game technologies apply to: simulation, animation, user interfaces, many more…  Game programming also teaches: mathematical programming, good OO style, C++, etc…  And it’s fun

CS426  Project  The project will be a continuation of the CS425 project with new features and goals  You will be in a team (real life is teams)  What will the project add?  Physics  You tell me?  Presentations  Demonstrate your game in-progress, and tell us what’s coming next  Research and present a game topic that is interesting to the class  Demonstrate and “sell” your final game

Progress Presentations  Every other week come in and demonstrate your game to the class  Tell us what you said you were going to during the previous presentation, how that worked out, and what you’ll show us in the next presentation  the key idea is I want you to have some sort of plan, but that plan will evolve over the semester… that’s okay as long as you are making progress  One slide is okay for this  Current plan is to have every other week be a lab session without lecture

Game Technology Presentation  Each student will give one presentation on a game technology. After school you will need to be able to learn without a professor’s explanation  Description:  Pick the technology  If you can, add it into your game or into a demo program you wrote  For “easier” technologies you should do a little more: explain how they are used in current games, historically, what makes it interesting

Presentation Examples (and expectations)  Joystick input – added to your code, explanation of other controller types (older/newer)  Pixel shaders – explain what they are, how they work, look for examples on the web. I would not expect you to write your own code this  Network gaming – issues and challenges with network gaming, how are some solved, implement a simple network interface to your game or a demo  Sound – How is this used to make games more engrossing, stereo. I would expect an example coded into your game. Can you implement “stereo” so things happen in different places, attenuation, etc…  Collision detection  Game AI (NPCs) – What are the types of algorithms to make them smart or dumb? How have they evolved? Write a simple NPC logic  Animation and graphics – tools used in modeling and animation. How do people create “characters”? Demonstrate using a tool to create a model for use in your game  Game creation in industry – how do people create games for the big platforms (Xbox, Wii, Playstation). Tools? techniques? Engines? Can you give an example (possibly XNA studio?)  Independent game creation – how do people create games as indie developers (app store, android, etc…) Tools? techniques? Engines? Can you give an example (possibly XNA studio?)

Presentation Examples (and expectations)  Game theory presentations are also okay  Different types of games? What makes games “fun”? Commercially successful?  History of games and how they have evolved. What’s next?  Challenges with new game platforms (iPhone, Android)  Different roles in games companies (artist, modeler, engine developer, etc…). What do they do?

Presentations  The previous lists are just examples. You do not have to choose a topic from the lists. Pick something interesting to you that you’d like to know about  You must let me know AHEAD of time what your presentation so we do not have duplicate presentations. Presentations will be spread out across the semester.  I expect the presentations to be about minutes… longer is fine, shorter is less-fine  The grading criteria is largely  was it interesting?  did it tell us something we didn’t already know?  were you prepared?