CSC-245: The Computer Science of Computer Games

Tues,Thurs 9am-10:45am, NWSE 210

Office Hours
Tuesday,Thursday 1pm-2:30pm
Or by appt.

Overview
This course provides a survey of computer science in the context of computer games. Developing successful computer games requires knowledge of a wide variety of different subjects within computer science. We will survey graphics, physics simulation, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, networking and explore their use in the development of computer games. We will also focus on the design of an enjoyable gaming experience.

Structure
The class will consist of a mixture of lecture, discussion and student presentations. Programming projects within the class will lead to the development of a complete multi-player game by the end of the semester. Programming projects will incrementally build on eachother, thus it is essentially that each project be completed correctly in a timely manner.
Also because there is no text for this class, students will be expected to attend class. One student per class will be designated the scribe and will be responsible for taking high quality notes for distribution to the remainder of the class.

Requirements
The class will be graded on a series of programming projects and student presentations. All of the programming projects except the first project will be completed in teams of three students. All students in a team will receive the same grade. Students will also be graded on participation in class. The breakdown of grading is as follows:

Course Projects:	40%
Final Project:	20%
Student Presentations:	20%
Scribe Notes:	10%
Class Participation:	10%

Scribe Notes
Since there is no text for the class, student's notes will form the text. To this end, one student per class will be assigned as the class "scribe." They will be responsible for taking detailed and high quality notes that will be redistributed to the class. The scribe is responsible for getting their notes to me via e-mail by Monday (for Thrusday classes) and by Friday (for Tuesday classes). Late scribe notes will be penalized at half off per day late.
The scribe notes and schedule for the future can be found here

Turning in work
All work will be submitted via e-mail to the instructor no later than 11:59pm on the day that the assignment is due. Extensions will not be granted except under extenuating circumstances.
Extensions must be requested prior to the date the project is due

In addition to submitting the source code (1 per team), each individual student must also send the instructor an e-mail describing the teamwork and share of effort within the team for the particular project. These e-mails will be used to determine if someone is not carrying their share of the programming load.

Grading work
Programs will be graded on two factors: The correctness of the code (75%) and the style of the code (25%). Programming style includes such things as clarity, comments, algorithm design, variable naming and other factors that make your code readable and useful to other programmers.

Presentations will be graded equally on the quality of the content presented and the clarity of the presentation.

If anyone has any questions about this grading policy please contact me at anytime.

Development Environment
You are free to use whatever development environment you want, however here are instructions for the one supported by this course.

Files
There are several libraries you will need for various parts of this class. Please don't download them until they're required for a project as they may be updated at anytime.

Academic Honesty
All code submitted will be run through several automated tools for detecting shared code. Any cases of plagirism will be refered to the Dean of Students and will result in failure of the course.

Course Schedule
Can be found here

Special Needs
I encourage any students with special educational needs to contact me at the beginning of the semester to develop appropriate accomodations. All students will require proper documentation from the Dean of Students' office. All such discussions will remain completely confidential.