teaching machines

CS 491 Lecture 1 – Hi

September 2, 2015 by Chris Johnson. Filed under fall 2015, gamedev2, lectures.

Agenda

• origins
• who are you?
• Lucky
• about the class
• TODO
• hello, Unity

TODO

• Read the syllabus.
• Install Unity.
• Watch at least the first two videos of Unity’s space shooter video tutorial: Introduction to Space Shooter and Setting up the Project.
• Before our next meeting on Friday, draw on paper an avatar that features some aspect of your identity that you think is important to this course. Scan it (or take a picture if need be) and upload it to the course blog in a post with exactly these three categories: gamedev2, fall 2015, and postmortems. This counts as a participation point. You will present these in class and they will help us form teams.
• On a 1/4 sheet of paper to be turned it at the beginning of class on Friday, answer these questions:
  1. What’s your name?
  2. Where do you call home?
  3. What’s something you’ve built that you’re proud of? Software or otherwise?
  4. What is the gnome’s name in King’s Quest 1?

Note

Welcome to CS 491: 2D Digital Game Development! Today our task is to say hi to each other and to our development environment. We’ll play a silly little game called Lucky that was inspired by an exchange between Pascal and Fermat in the 1600s. It will be the first example of the importance of a human touch in game development.

Originally this game was going to be on game development in general, but I was given a chance to teach another elective in the spring. Since game development is a circuitous dungeon, I decided to split our quest in two. This fall we’ll focus on 2D. In the spring, we’ll focus on 3D.

Schools sometimes offer game development classes to lure students in to their programs. I can sincerely tell you that I wanted to offer this course so that I could pursue my own selfish interests, and that you are here is simply icing on the cake. Like many of you, I pursued computer science because of my interest in gaming. College and graduate school took a severe bite out of my time, but now that I have a family of six (four kids, one wife, and me), I have more time to play games!

Balancing an elective class like this is difficult. I’ve tried to include a mix of individual and group responsibilities, because I think both modes of working are equally important. Group work can be a headache, but we have to learn how to do it effectively. The scope of games is far too big for one skill set and one perspective to do great work. If we don’t figure how to work effectively in groups in this class, I hope you can at least be more informed next time you have to work in a group!

After we learn a bit about each other and the class, we’ll have a quick peek at the Unity game engine. We’ll get some card assets imported into our first project, check out Unity’s component-based design, and see how to layout our scene statically and dynamically. This will lead into our first lab, which—because of the holiday—won’t happen until the third week of class.

Haiku