Syllabus
1. Programming Tools of professional development: Visual Studio, Incredibuild, SourceSafe/CVS/SVN/GIT/Perforce. Team work: division of the work, roles, responsibilities for funcitional elements, communication and documentation. Scripting languages: role of scripting; connecting a script to the game properly. Game code architecture: design patterns for games; communication with designers; programming for consoles; usage of specialized hardware.
2. Project management Managing the project; project methodology (waterfall vs. iterative development, agile methodologies); communication within the team. Asset Management Creating and maintaining configuration files, localization, patching.
3. Video game development cycle Project development cycle: design, research, pre-production, production, release, 0-day patching. Who decides what goes where and when in game development. Financing: financial models; finding a publisher
4. Game design What is game design? History and definition of the term "design" in the context of video games. Difficulty and the player’s challenge. Why is difficulty important for game design and how it informs the games as a genre. Combat as the primary means of communication with the game. Narrative construction in games.
5. Hosted lessons We are periodically inviting game development professionals to lecture about relevant topics.
Annotation
The course gives a complex overview of computer games development. It covers programming, game design and project management.
This is a joint course for computer science students of Faculty of Mathematics