Computer Game Development
Dr. Scott Schaefer
Course Information
• Instructor: Dr. Schaefer
• Office: HRBB 527B
• Office Hours: by appointment
• Website:
http://courses.cs.tamu.edu/schaefer/489_Spring2009
Grading
•
•
•
•
•
Website: 5%
Proposal: 10%
Status Reports/Presentations: 5% (6 total)
Final Report/Presentation: 10%
Final Project: 30%
• Originality, completion of milestones, polish,
difficulty
• Participation: 10%
The Course Project
• Build a team
• Tell me your team members ASAP
• If you can’t find a group, I’ll help
• Build a game
•
•
•
•
•
Settle on a game idea (1/26)
Website (1/30)
Formal Game Proposal/Design (1/30)
Progress Reports/Presentations (every 2 weeks)
Final Report/Presentation (5/12)
Building a Team
• Games are made up of lots of areas of CS
• Graphics, networking, AI, physics, etc…
• Consider building a diverse team
• Come up with a name
• I’d like groups formed by 1/23!!!
• Start after this lecture
Game Ideas
• Think small
• You don’t have
•
•
•
•
Experience
Years of time
Millions of dollars
…
Game Ideas
• Try to do one thing well
•
•
•
•
Good graphics/animation
Cool physics
Excellent sounds
Clever puzzles
• Don’t do a mediocre job in everything
• One of everything
• You won’t design hundreds of levels
Game Website
• Create a website for your game (send me
the URL)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Team name/members
Description of game
Proposal link
Status reports
Final report
Download for final game
Game Proposal
•
•
•
•
Description of game
Unique features of game
Screen mockups?
Development schedule
• Functional minimum
(I expect the minimum done before Spring break)
• Low target
• Desirable target
• High target
• State who will be responsible for each part
Proposal Presentation
• 10 minutes:
1/30
• Describe your game
• State what’s unique about your game
• Development schedule
Progress Reports (Group)
• Every two weeks
(2/11,2/25,3/11,4/1,4/15,4/29)
• State work done over past two weeks
• Describe difficulties encountered
• Oral presentation to class
Progress Reports (Individual)
• Send in an email to me
• Assign a percentage effort to each team
member
• Describe what YOU think each team
member did over the past two weeks
(including yourself)
• RMS of scores will make up part of your
participation grade
Final Report (Group)
• Due on date of final exam (5/12)
• Describe
• what went right
• what went wrong
• what changes if any you made to your original design
and why
• what you would have done had you more time
• Oral presentation demonstrating final game
Final Report (Individual)
• Send in an email to me
• Assign a percentage effort to each team
member including yourself
• Write a justification for your assignments
• RMS of scores will make up part of your
participation grade
The Evolution of Game Hardware
• Atari 2600 - 1977
• 1.18MHz 6507
• 128 bytes RAM
• 4KB ROM
• Atari 5200 - 1982
(incompatible cartridge with 2600)
• 1.8MHz 6502
• 16KB RAM
The Evolution of Game Hardware
• Nintendo Entertainment System - 1985
•
•
•
•
1.79MHz
256x240 pixels
2KB RAM
Mario Bros!
The Evolution of Game Hardware
• Sega Genesis - 1988
• 7.6MHz
• 64KB RAM
• Game Boy -1989
• 8-bit 4.2 MHz
• 8KB RAM
• Tetris!
The Evolution of Game Hardware
• Super NES - 1990
• 3.58Mhz 65C816 16bit CPU
• 128KB RAM
• Playstation - 1994
• 34 MHz R3900 32bit CPU
• 2MB RAM (CPU), 1MB RAM (Video)
• Nintendo 64 - 1996
• 94MHz R4300 64bit CPU
• Reality Co-Processor – SGI
• 4MB RAM
The Evolution of Game Hardware
Playstation2 - 2000
• 295MHz R12000 CPU
• 32MB RAM
• XBox - 2001
• 733MHz Celeron
• 64MB RAM
• nVidia GeForce4
• GameCube - 2001
• 485MHz PowerPC
• 43MB RAM
The Evolution of Game Hardware
Playstation3 - 2006
• 3.2GHz Cell CPU
• 256MB RAM + 256MB Video RAM
• XBox360 - 2005
• 3.2GHz PowerPC
• 512MB RAM
• Nintendo Wii - 2006
• 729MHz PowerPC
• 88MB RAM
The Evolution of Game Hardware
The PC
• Different processors
• Different GPUs
• Different amounts
of RAM
Game Genres
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Action
1st Person Shooter
Sports
Fighting
Puzzle
Racing
Role-Playing