Course Details

Game Development Courses

 

Course Description:

The purpose of this course is twofold: to provide a strong foundation in software engineering, programming, and the C# language; and to work on all major aspects of developing video games using the Unity engine. These two purposes are closely tied: a large part of video game development centers on programming and software development, and to be a game developer requires a high level of knowledge in a modern, object-oriented language like C#. Through this course, students will learn programming by working on games, and will learn to write code to run every part of their game, from physics to AI to game servers. Rather than focusing narrowly on topics needed to make games, this course will teach you to be a programmer with a solid foundation. This course will allow you to be able to enter any programming field you'd like, from mobile apps to web servers. (This is actually a common path for game developers: they spend a few years in a related field working on their programming skills before moving to game development.)

 

Course Outline:

 

Week 1:

Intro to game design and production Unity production basics: Lighting, materials, effects, etc. Creating a simple game C# in game development

 

Week 2: Working with 3D

games Rigidbody

physics

User input and UI

Game Design 101: Balancing games, analyzing games, the MDA framework CubeShip Game

Game Programming

101 Working with Animations

 

Week 3:

Game Programming 102

Game Design 102: Choice, agency, aesthetics, and more

UI Development

Unity Editor Intermediate Topics

Raycasting

Exam 1

 

Week 4:

Start on Game Design 1

Game Programming 103

3D Characters: Animation & control

Intermediate Game Production

Event Systems & Delegates

 

Week 5:

Game Design 1 wrap-up

Intermediate Game Production Topics

Game Programming 104

Useful code libraries

Data Structures

Global Illumination

 

Week 6:

2D Game Jam

Exam 2

Game Design 103: Level Design & Tutorials

 

Week 7:

Start on Last major game design

3D Models

Debugging

Introduction to Git

Editor extensions I/ O

 

Week 8:

Intro to AI

FSMs Game

design project

 

Week 10:

Beyond Game Design: Programming applications Algorithms & Trees

Game design project

 

Week 11:

Affordances & User

Experience Design Patterns

Final game design presentations

Exam 3

 

Week 12:

Networking intro & JSON

Creating non-Unity C# applications

Web server basics

 

Week 13:

Deploying web servers Creating a RESTful interface

 

Week 14:

Connecting games to services

Databases Other networking topics

 

Week 15:

Course Wrap-Up Advanced programming topics (TBD)