Syllabus

Credit Hours: 3

Contact Hours: 3 hours lecture per week

Frequency: Tuesday / Thursday 4:30-5:50 PM

Texts and Other Supplemental Materials: #

• (Optional) The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses; Jesse Schnell; 3rd edition; 2019.
• (Optional) Rules of Play; Katie Salen Tekinbaş and Eric Zimmerman; 2003.

Catalog Course Description: #

The essentials of video game design and implementation, including planning, graphics, sound, programming and testing. Focus is on a semester-long, small-team, interdisciplinary project to develop and present a complete, full-featured game.

Prerequisites: #

ART 2050 or CSC 3102 or MUS 2732 or permission of instructor.

Applied to the Degree: selected elective #

• Software Engineering Concentration – Selected elective area concentration
• All concentrations – CSC 3000-level and above elective
• All concentrations – Selected “Tech” elective Group A
• All concentrations except CS and the Second Discipline Concentration – Approved free elective

Learning Objectives: #

1. Apply concepts related to aesthetic development as it relates to the human-centric evaluation and evolution of effective visual and audio experiences
2. Demonstrate theoretical and artistic techniques in a graphical application
3. Apply theory and principles related to 3D graphics
4. Utilize general-purpose development tools in game development
5. Create a problem solution by using principles of software architecture and software engineering in the context of video game development
6. Apply the motivating applications of algorithms, automata theory, artificial intelligence, and physical simulation
7. Practice the communication skills necessary to work in a collaborative environment on a team-based project
8. Practice the communications skills necessary for oral presentation and software project demonstration

Major Topics: #

1. Video game history
2. Taxonomy and genre of video games
3. The impact and ethics of gaming
4. Game-play design and the components of a video game experience
5. Creation of engrossing environments and coherent worlds
6. Authoring of effective visual and audio assets
7. Software architecture and engineering for video games
8. Introduction to real-time 3D graphics
9. Hardware architecture of contemporary video game platforms
10. Algorithm implementation and trade-offs
11. Human physical and perceptual issues
12. Game artificial intelligence
13. Applications of automata theory
14. Multiplayer game design
15. Physical simulation
16. Testing and quality assurance