My Roles

Lab instructor and teaching assistant.
Responsible for leading individual/group discussion sections, technical tutorials, living coding and debugging of 25-50 students, grading assignments, preparing and giving 2-hour lab tutorials once per week throughout the semester.

Course Introduction

This course introduces the basics of game mechanics and systems, and Processing‘s programming methods for implementing video games. Students learn how games are structured and designed as well as the translation of the game design document into programmatic code. Students are introduced to the key ideas of event-driven and object oriented programming as well as basic programming practice including systems design, iterative development and evaluation. The course will use the programming language Java/Processing and its IDE to design and develop games of complexity similar to casual, browser-based games

Course Syllabus

Week	Date	Topic	Reading		Assignments
1 Lec		Overview of course. Game as a context; Simple shape drawing; Colors.
Lab		Intro Java/Processing; Simple shape drawing
2 Lec		Translation, Rotation, Scale; Data types & variables; Methods; Mouse Interaction
Lab		Drawing with translation; Mouse interactions
3 Lec		Conditionals; Loops; Array; Randomness			Assignment 1
Lab		Loops & arrays
4 Lec		Classes & Objects Quiz 1
Lab		Classes and Objects; Boundary & collision detection
5 Lec		ArrayList; Boundary detection; Collision detection b/w a point & an object; String & Text messages			Assignment 2
Lab		Text messages
6 Lec		Inheritance & Polymorphism
Lab		Inheritance & Polymorphism
7 Lec		Collision detection b/w objects; Motion & Vector; Keyboard; Controlling an Avatar. QUIZ 2
Lab		Vector-based motion; Key-based interaction
8 Lec		Motion simulation; Game genres & Mechanics; UML& Software design; Fundamentals on game design			Assignment 3
Lab		Game loop.
9 Lec		Using images for maps and tokens; Debugging tips			Assignment 4 Proposal
Lab		Feedback: check-off Assignment 4 proposal
10 Lec		Game level design; Platformer and Level QUIZ 3			Assignment 4 Milestone 1
Lab		Create game levels with images.
11 Lec		Advanced images: image-based animations; Game Narratives			Assignment 4 Milestone 2
Lab		Image-based animations
12 Lec		Animated background; Load and play sound; Add sounds to games
Lab		Sound Effects
13 Lec		Final Review & Recap			Assignment 4 Final
Lab		Open Lab
Final	Exam

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Design, program and test a complete, simple game program;
• Utilize an IDE for program development (file organization, coding and debugging);
• Define the main concepts in Object-Oriented Programming: Encapsulation, Inheritance, Polymorphism; identify these concepts in code; and explain the benefits of their usage; design/write code that makes good use of these concepts;
• Apply an event-driven programming architecture to create a traditional update/render game loop and handle user input;
• Discuss the issues involved in collision detection and solve this problem programmatically for simple cases.

Teaching Methods

Technical Tutorials: Each lab has a 45-60 minute programming tutorial at the beginning, which is closely related to the lecture’s concepts. The students will follow the tutorials through live coding and ask questions.

Lab Challenges: After some programming tutorials, there will be a challenge that must be completed before the beginning of the next lab. These challenges will be simple and are designed to test the students’ knowledge learned in the previous lecture and current lab.

Assignments & Projects: The assignments are all project-based, where the students need to code different simulation environments. The outcomes are open-ended, but the technical requirements are derived from the course concepts.

Quizzes & Exams: Three in-class 30 mins quizzes and the final exam test students’ knowledge of the lecture material, readings, and programming capabilities.

Student Sample Projects

 

 

 

 

 

 

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