2d Game Design Syllabus

Office Hours:

2d games are considerably simpler to design and implement than 3d games. Without
 having to worry about things like physics or lighting, developers can focus on
programming more fundamental gameplay issues. In this class we will look at whole life cycle game development including gameplay elements, design and implementation. Students will begin with sketching out ideas, implement 2d graphics including both maps and creating the illusion of infinite space. We will look at game AI including pathing and goal selection. In this class students will also explore issues of art selection for games, including copyright issues and intellectual property.

Class Requirements and grading:

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 http://www.bridgew.edu/handbook/policiesprocedures/academicintegrity.cfm  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.

This means if you copy sentences from the internet without quoting them, and pass them in as your own - you are cheating: you are representing someone elses work as your own. This applies to papers, homeworks, projects and other work that you pass in.

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, pdas, 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.

All 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.

Guidelines for "code reuse"
This is an upper level computer science course, so we will be writing significant programs as part of the course. While the majority of each project should and must be your own, there is a long tradition in computer science of code reuse (the instructor will give a brief aside on proper code reuse when reviewing the syllabus with the class at this point). For the purposes of this class,  you may reuse (grab some some place on the net) up to 20% of the code for your project provided

1. You reference every line of code that you are reusing from the net or some other project that you did not write completely by yourself. (that is you tell me in code and in your documentation that you submit where you got the code from)
   
2. that you set off all lines that you are reusing with a comment explaining that these are the reused lines.

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, pagers, electronic organizers and other devises should be silenced while in class. If you work of EMS or something similar, please turn your cell phones/ pagers 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 college for appropriate action.