1. Chapter 1
Introduction

2. What is a Game Engine? What are some examples of game engines?
Unity3D, Unreal, Panda3D …
What make these game engines?
From the user (Game Designer) perspective
From the developer (you) perspective
What is behind the GUI?
What if there is no GUI?
Remember: we are limited to 2D only

3. What are required of a game engine?
Ask: why do we need a game engine?
Simple: Make building games easier!
Then: what is/are required to make building games easier?
Two perspectives (for us, CS people):
As a tool: use to build games
Do the mundane
Hide the complex
As a software system:
Maintain, Refine (improve what’s there), Expand (support additional functionality)
Care about: software architecture and organization

4. What are the mundane? System interface for
Resource loading (image, audio, scene files, any files)
Input from mouse/keyboard
Audio output
Some kind of real-time looping mechanism
Drawing of objects: simple image, text/fonts
Dealing with pixels

5. What are the complex? Camera Manipulation Illumination: Physics:
Lighting effects, shadows
Physics:
Collision detection: per-pixel accurate?
Collision responses
Special effects
Fire, Explosion, Water

6. What about as a software system?
Commonly used utility objects:
Random, Interpolate, Shake
Functions to relieve from math details:
Chase, Follow
Abstraction to relieve from details:
Transforms, Materials, Cameras
Object hierarchy to facility reuse
Architectural framework to present all of the above coherently and facilitate changing and update

7. So we will learn Implement and hide the mundane
Support the complex and present simple programming API
All with a software architecture that supports
Maintain, refine, and expand

8. The technology: tools for learning …
What we need?
Programming language
Graphics Support
System Support
Loading/Input/Output
What are viable?
C++ / OpenGL / GLUT (or whatever)
C++ / D3D / WPF
C# / MonoGame / WindForm
Java / JOGL / Swing
JavaScript / WebGL / HTML5
Our choice:
Web-play anywhere!

9. Goals and Non-goals Goals: Non-Goals:
Learn concepts, see how implemented
Should: transport your knowledge to another platform
Non-Goals:
Learn JavaScript, HTML5, or WebGL
I know WebGL (barely), do not know JavaScript or HTML5

10. Development Environment
IDE + Deployment platform (Chrome)
What is an IDE?
Need to make the connection between Chrome and the IDE
GLSL Syntax Checker
JSLint or JSHint
Eventually: needs a math library
You do need a math library