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• Objectiveo to give some background on the course

Animation and Games

Development242-515, Semester 1, 2015-2016

• Who we are:• Aj. Andrew Davison, WiG Lab

ad@fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th

• Aj. Anant Choksuriwong not in 2015-2016ant@coe.psu.ac.th

0. Preliminaries Please askquestions

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1. Why Make Games?2. Course Objectives3. Meeting Times / Locations4. Workload5. Course Materials6. Further Information

Overview

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

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Modern Games are Complex

• Technologies used:o 2D & 3D Graphicso sound & musico networkingo Artificial Intelligenceo physics simulationo parallel processingo custom scripting languageso etc.

2. Course Objectives• This course will focus on game graphics and

maths:o basic 3D graphics theoryo graphics programming with the Java game engine JMonkeyEngine

• We won’t study:o gameplay, storylines, game art, the production

process, artist tools, network layers

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• Aj. Andrew's topics (they may change):o background: history, genre, the future, game

development, game architectureo 3D maths: vectors, coordinate spaces, matricies,

transformationso illumination: color, lightingo texturingo mesheso physics: motion, mass, collision detectiono particle effectso landscape

Main Topic Headings

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• Aj. Anant's topics: (they may change):o none this year (2015-2016)

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• These times can be changed if both Ajarn and most of the students in the class agree.

3. Meeting Times / Locations

Tuesday 10:30 – 12:00 R101

Friday 10:30 – 12:00 R101

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• Mid-term Exam: 30% (2 hours)

• Two Exercises, each worth 15% (total = 30%)o 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)

4. Workload (% of total score)

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• 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).

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• We may 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 losto deducted from your final mark

Non-Attendence Penalty

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• 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.

5. Course Materials

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• A good gaming overview:o Introduction to Game Development

Editor: Steve RabinCharles River Media, 2005

• My main source for maths:o 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development

Fletcher Dunn and Ian ParberryA K Peters / CRC Press, 2002

o http://gamemath.com/

Reading Materials

Aj. Andrew has PDF versions of these books.

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• jMonkeyEngine information:o jMonkeyEngine 3.0 Beginner's Guide

Ruth KustererPackt Publishing, 2013

o There are lots of tutorials online at the JMonkey website:• http://jmonkeyengine.com/

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• You should download and install Java and JMonkeyEngineo Aj. Andrew will explain how to install and use

JMonkeyEngine later in the course

• A old-ish version of Java (Java SE 6.0) is at:o http://java.coe.psu.ac.th/RefImp.html#JavaSE

• You should get JavaSE 6.0 SDK, WindowsFull (76.7 MB) and the 6.0 documentation (53.7 MB)

6. Further Information

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

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Web Resources• Games Developers

o http://www.gameasutra.com/o http://www.gamedevelopers.ie

• General Gaming:o http://www.pczone.co.uko http://www.gamespot.com

• Game design magazineso http://www.gdmag.com/homepage.htm