Animation and Games Development

Animation and Games Development 242-515, Semester 1, 2014-2015 • Objective • to give some background on the course Please ask questions 0. Preliminaries • Who we are: • Aj. Andrew Davison, WiG Labad@fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th • Aj. Anant Choksuriwong not in 2014-2015ant@coe.psu.ac.th

Overview 1. Why Make Games? 2. Course Objectives 3. Meeting Times / Locations 4. Workload 5. Course Materials 6. Further Information

1. Why Make Games? • It’s fun! People like to play games • The game industry is huge and growing rapidly • Game programming is inspiring a new generation of designers and programmers • Drives research and development in many areas, such as graphics and AI Half-life 2

Modern Games are Complex • Technologies used: • 2D & 3D Graphics • sound & music • networking • Artificial Intelligence • physics simulation • parallel processing • custom scripting languages • etc.

2. Course Objectives • This course will focus on game graphics and maths: • basic 3D graphics theory • graphics programming with the Java game engine JMonkeyEngine • We won’t study: • gameplay, storylines, game art, the production process, artist tools, network layers

Main Topic Headings • Aj. Andrew's topics (they may change): • background: history, genre, the future, game development, game architecture • 3D maths: vectors, coordinate spaces, matricies, transformations • illumination: color, lighting • texturing • meshes • physics: motion, mass, collision detection • particle effects • landscape

Aj. Anant's topics: (they may change): • none this year (2014-2015)

3. Meeting Times / Locations • These times can be changed if both Ajarn and most of the students in the class agree.

4. Workload (% of total score) • Mid-term Exam: 30% (2 hours) • Two Exercises, each worth 15% (total = 30%) • one will be assigned by Aj. Andrew, the other by Aj.Anant • exercises 1, weeks 7-8 • exercises 2, weeks 15-16 • Final Exam: 40% (3 hours)

Aj. Andrew will teach roughly the first half of the class (about 8 weeks) • Aj. Anant will teach the second half (the last 8 weeks, after the midterm exam).

Non-Attendence Penalty • Wemay take registration at the start of a class. • If someone is not there, they lose 1%(unless they have a good excuse). • A maximum of 10% can be lost • deducted from your final mark

5. Course Materials • All the handouts (and other materials, such as code examples) produced by Aj. Andrew will be placed on-line at: http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/ Software.coe/242-515_AGD/ • Print using 6 slides/page to save trees. • Aj. Andrew will not be using the LMS.

Reading Materials • A good gaming overview: • Introduction to Game Development Editor: Steve RabinCharles River Media, 2005 • My main source for maths: • 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game DevelopmentFletcher Dunn and Ian ParberryA K Peters / CRC Press, 2002 • http://gamemath.com/ Aj. Andrew has PDF versions of these books. continued

jMonkeyEngine information: • jMonkeyEngine 3.0 Beginner's GuideRuth KustererPackt Publishing, 2013 • There are lots of tutorials online at the JMonkey website: • http://jmonkeyengine.com/

6. Further Information • You should download and install Java and JMonkeyEngine • Aj. Andrew will explain how to install and use JMonkeyEngine later in the course • A old-ish version of Java (JavaSE 6.0) is at: • http://java.coe.psu.ac.th/RefImp.html#JavaSE • You should get JavaSE 6.0SDK, WindowsFull (76.7 MB) and the 6.0documentation (53.7 MB) continued

JMonkeyEngine can be downloaded from: • http://jmonkeyengine.com/

Web Resources • Games Developers • http://www.gameasutra.com/ • http://www.gamedevelopers.ie • General Gaming: • http://www.pczone.co.uk • http://www.gamespot.com • Game design magazines • http://www.gdmag.com/homepage.htm

Animation and Games Development