2D Game Design

Syllabus

Instructor: Dr. John F. Santore
Phone: 508-531-2226
Office: Science Center 333
E-Mail: jsantore@bridgew.edu
Instructor Web Page: http://webhost.bridgew.edu/jsantore/
Course Web Page: http://webhost.bridgew.edu/jsantore/Fall2019/GameDes/

Office Hours for Fall 2019:
Mon 10-11am
Tues: 5-5:50pm
Wed: 3:15-4:15pm
Fri: 10-11am

or by appointment

I also will take appointments if you cannot make my other office hours, however, I generally have meetings and work prepared for a day or two ahead so plan on about 48 hours from the time I get your request to us being able to meet.

Course Description:

Course Outcomes:

By the end of the course each student should:

• be able to implement basic 2d techniques like tiling, parallax and others
  

• understand the intellectual property laws associated with game development and design.
  

• understand and implement the client server and secure server techniques needed for a multiplayer game
  

• understand and implement some basic game AI
  

• understand the various game publication and target venues and the strengths and weaknesses of each.
  

• demonstrate an understanding of the formal elements of game design and how they can be used in designing your own games.
  

Class Requirements and grading:

Game Programming Projects:

Game Development Projects:

Exams:

Everything else:

Students with special needs:

Anyone who has special needs should contact me in the first week of classes so that reasonable accommodations can be agreed on.

Academic Integrity:

See the BSU Academic Integrity statement (most recent available at the moment) for a complete description of the academic integrity procedure at Bridgewater.

Academic integrity will be taken very seriously in this class. All individual work must be your own. If you cheat or otherwise represent the work of others as your own. You will receive an F for the course.

Guidelines for proper academic integrity:

Discussing problems with your classmates can help you understand the problems and kinds of solutions to those problems that you will learn about in this class. In an effort to make in clear what sort of discussions are appropriate and encouraged in this class and which cross the line to academic dishonesty I use the following guidelines: You may discuss any out of class problem I assign in this class with your classmates or other so long as no one is using any sort of recording implement including, but not limited to, computers, digital recorders, pens, pencils, phones etc. This lets you talk about theoretical solutions without sharing the actual implementations. As soon as anyone in the group is typing, writing etc, all conversations must stop. You may look at someone else's program code only very briefly in order to spot a simple syntax error. As a rule of thumb, if you find yourself looking at someone else's code for more than about 30-45 seconds it is probably time to stop. If you are having trouble with your program, come to the instructors office hours for more help.

Furthermore, this is an upper level computer science class, using examples and online resources as *part* of your solution is reasonable and expected. If you use something from an online resource, you need to comment that section of your code (one at the beginning and one at the end) with the source of the borrowed code. This borrowed code can't be more than 20% of the assignment.

Some in class exams and quizzes are closed book and closed neighbor. If you are found using a data storage device of any kind during one of these evaluations, you will be failed for the course.

Those that are open book, will allow electronic storage so long as no AI assistants or search facilities are used.

Of course for your group work, your entire group is intended to produce a single deliverable and are expected to work together on all parts of that so the above does not apply to members of a group working together on their group work.

Standards for in class behavior:

You are all adults and are expected to act as adults in this class. While questions are encouraged in this class, if a particular line of questioning is taking us too far afield, I will ask the student to come by my office hours or to see me after class.

Cell phones,  electronic organizers and other devices should be silenced while in class. If you work for EMS or are the emergency contact for a loved one or something similar, please turn your cell phones etc to vibrate mode so that you are not disrupting others in the class.

In the unlikely case of trouble makers in the class, those who are simply attempting to disrupt the class will be asked to stop; those who will not, will be referred to the University for appropriate action.

Tentative Schedule:

I may well change the order of the topics depending on how things are going in the semester.