CS3113 - Introduction to Game Programming

2014 Spring

http://cis.poly.edu/jsterling/cs3113

Instructor: John Sterling
Office: MetroTech 2, 872 / 10.090
email: jsterling@poly.edu
phone: (718) 260-4138

Course Description:

Fundamental concerns in video game programming
Using Microsoft's XNA game development framework and C#.

Textbook

There is no single text. Where possible, we will use resources from the web. Below I will mention various books that I have looked at that may be useful.

Topics

Game development tools - Libraries, engines and frameworks
Collision detection and resolution
Aiming, Chase and Evade, "Flocking"
AI: Path-finding, Finite State Machines, Fuzzy logic
Audio programming, Sound Engines
Math Fundamentals
Trigonometry, matrix algebra, homogeneous coordinates, linear transformations
3D Graphics programming, Lighting models
Architecture, optimization, threading
Network programming, client/server architecture, shared virtual worlds

Grading

Grading will be based on weekly assignments, tests and a course project.

Course Overview (tentative)

Week	Topics
1	Overview History Basics of C# / XNA
2	Time, sprite animation and transparency
3	Mouse interaction and drawing
4	Search
5	Basic Physics Collision detection
6	Transformations, Vectors and Matrices
7	Aim / Chase / Evade
8	Combining Behaviors: flocking
9	3D graphics intro
10	Yaw, pitch and roll.
11	Shaders
12	Audio
13	Project demos

Resources

Lecture log
In class code
Slides
Code Samples
Online resources

gamasutra.com: "The Art and Business of Making Games"
gamedev.net.
- Articles about programmng games. Review of books.
- Some articles are clearly old, so the content/opinions may be less relevant.
www.dreamspark.com
- Source for free legal versions of Visual Studio (and other products) for students.
MSDN
C# Standard
History of Video Games (neat ~45 minute Youtube)
AI
- Amit's A* Pages
- Pac-man dossier
  - Interesting host of details about the workings of Pacman, including the AI involved. (Note, the AI for Games book, below, makes very different statements about Pacman's AI.)
Books
- .NET Book Zero by Charles Petzold. Petzold is a respected author about coding in a Microsoft environment. Here he gives the background a C/C++ programmer would want to know about C# and the .Net Framework. 267 pages.
- C# Yellow Book by Rob Miles. Miles' website says that this is used for instruction at University of Hull, UK.
- C# books From Safaria via Poly's library access (Hm, most recent is from 2006)
- Game programming books from Safari via Poly's library access
- Books24x7 via Poly's library (I'll leave you to search it.)
Tools
- Unreal Development Kit
- Gimp
- Blender
  - Tutorials
  - Book: Essential Blender
  - Two-page "Quickstart". Really a crib-sheet for the interface, not so much of a guide. Note that this is claimed to be the "updated" guide. I have not compared it with the original. Both are posted on wiki.blender.org.
  - A guide on flossmanuals.net. Can be extracted as a pdf file or read online.
  - Some other tutorials. The Yellow Submarine was recommended and it looks pretty neat. Starts with a 2D graphic and creates a 3D sub based on it.
  - Exporters
    - Blender exporters. Both .x and .fbx are apparently included in that standard package. Choose File->Export->AutoDesk FBX, for example.
    - TripleBGames has a link to an exporter that seems to be specific to XNA. Don't know what is different from the one on Blender's site.

Books offline
- XNA
  - Learning XNA 4.0 by Aaron Reed. O'Reilly.
    - A handy guide to the basic mechanics of programming a game in XNA. Starts with 2D and builds up to 3D.
  - Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0 Unleashed
    - Discusses 3D before 2D, the opposite of what I would like to see.
- Game Programming Gems Series; Charles River Media.
  - Each volume contains lots of articles by various authors highlighing some potientially useful technique.
  - The first volume, for example, has a set of articles on path-planning.
- Introduction to Game Development; Rabin; Cengage
  - An overview of issues in game programming, from the definition of fun, through history and project management issues.
- Game Coding Complete; McShaffry.
  - An interesting read. Don't assume that "complete" means that you will be able to run out an program a game, but you will probably know more about what goes into the whole process.
- Artificial Intelligence
  - Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approac.; Russell and Norvig; Prentice Hall.
    - Not a "game programming" book, but a handy book for discussions of various approaches to AI issues. Probably the most widely used intro to AI book used in college courses for quite a few years.
  - Artificial Intelligence for Games; Ian Millington and John Funge; Morgan Kaufman.
    - Useful. A bit plodding as it builds its way up, but covers a lot of material
  - AI Game Engine Programming; Schwab; Cengage Learning, Course Technology (Charles River Media); 2009.
- Game Physics
  - Game Physics; David Eberly; Morgan Kaufman.
    - Math heavy.
  - Game Physics Engine Development; Ian Millington; Morgan Kaufman.
    - Looks to be a reasonably gentle intro to programming physics in a game environment. Not a "how-to for dummies", but doesn't demand that my math and physics skills be at their peak.
- C#
  - C# 4.0 in a Nutshell; Albahari and Albahari; O'Reilly.
    - A reasonably well written explanation of C#. Should be easy to jump in and pick up what you need. Don't let the "in a Nutshell" portion of the title fool you; this is still over a 1000 pages, even if they are relatively small pages.