Game Engine Architecture Semester 1

Objective This course provides students with an introduction to the theory and practice of video game programming. Students will participate in individual hands-on lab exercises, and also work together like a real game development team to design and build their own functional game using an existing game engine (e.g. XNA). Real-time programming and the game loop, human interface devices, 3D rendering, collision detection, skeletal animation, rigid body dynamics, game object models, event-driven programming, game scripting languages. Introductory Computer Science (Data Structures and Algorithms) Introductory C++ Programming 2 hrs/week 2 hrs/week Jason Gregory. Game Engine Architecture. AK Peters. ISBN 978-1-56881-413-1. Final grade is based upon the students score on individual labs and assigned problems, the midterm and final exams, and the grades earned on a multi-lab team-based project. Individual Labs and Assigned Problems Midterm Exam Final Exam Team Project: Individual Contribution Team Project: Overall Project Grade TOTAL POSSIBLE 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 100%

Concepts

Prerequisite Lecture Lab Textbook

Grading

Game Engine Architecture

Syllabus, Semester 1

Game Engine Architecture

Semester 1
Course Outline
Week 1 Introduction - Course overview - What is a game? - Structure of a typical game development team - Overview of the technologies that comprise a typical 3D game Reading:
- Course text: 1.1 1.2

Week 2 Tools of the Trade - Version control and Subversion - Microsoft Visual Studio tips and tricks - Profiling tools - Memory leak / corruption detection - Other tools Reading:
- Course text: 2.1 2.5

Week 3 3D Math for Games - Points, vectors and Cartesian coordinates - Vector operations, dot and cross product - 2D and 3D matrices, homogeneous coordinates - Hierarchical coordinate frames, change of basis - Introduction to quaternions - Comparison of rotational representations Reading:
- Course text: 4.1 4.5 - 3D math problems

Assignment: Week 4 Time and the Game Loop - The rendering loop - The game loop - Game loop architectural styles - Abstract timelines - Measuring and dealing with time Reading:
- Course text: 7.1 7.5

Week 5 Human Interface Devices - Types of human interface devices - Interfacing with a HID - Handling various types of inputs, outputs
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Game Engine Architecture

Syllabus, Semester 1

Game engine HID systems

Dead zone Detecting button-up and button-down Chords, sequences and gestures Control remapping Context-sensitive controls - Course text: 8.1 8.6

Reading:

Week 6 Introduction to 3D Rendering - Triangle meshes and tessellation - Coordinate spaces and rendering transformations - Lighting, color and texturing basics - The virtual camera and projection Reading:
- Course text: 10.1

Week 7 Fundamentals of Character Animation - Types of character animation - Skeletons and poses - Clips and the local time line - Skinning Reading:
- Course text: 11.1 11.5

Lab: Team Project

- Teams work on engine and game play systems in parallel

Week 8 MIDTERM EXAM - Midterm review and preparation Reading: Lab:

- Review prior weeks readings

MIDTERM EXAM during lab hours Week 9 Collision Detection - Collision detection basics - Sphere vs sphere - Axis-aligned bounding boxes - Other collision primitives - Optimization: Broad phase, narrow phase, spatial subdivision Reading:
- Course text: 12.3.1 12.3.4, 12.3.5.1 12.3.5.4

Week 10 Introduction to Rigid Body Dynamics - Is physics fun? - Point mass linear dynamics - Numerical integration - Survey of collision/physics middleware: ODE, PhysX, Havok

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Game Engine Architecture

Syllabus, Semester 1

Reading:
- Course text: 12.1, 12.2, 12.4.1 12.4.4

Week 11 Introduction to Game Object Models - What is a game object model? - World editors - Distinction between offline and runtime object models - Spawners - Basics of game object updating and engine system integration Reading:
- Course text: 13, 14.1, 14.2.1.1 14.2.1.2, 14.3, 14.6.1 14.6.3

Week 12 The Resource Manager - File system APIs for game engines - Asynchronous file I/O - Survey of tools and the asset pipeline - Resource management basics Reading:
- Course text: 6.1, 6.2.1, 6.2.2 (except 6.2.2.7)

Week 13 Events and Scripting - Events and message passing - Scripting languages - High-level game flow Reading:
- Course text: 14.7, 14.8, 14.9

Week 14 Game Audio - Audio codecs and clip playback - Audio rendering technologies: Dolby DTS, 5.1 surround, etc. - 3D audio concepts - Audio data management: banks, cues, etc. - Overview of Microsoft XACT tool and runtime API Reading:
- Microsoft XACT manuals (online)

Week 15 Wrap-Up - Overflow topics as necessary - Getting into the game industry resumes, interviews, demos - Life in the game industry Exam Week Final Exam and Team Game Project Due

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Game Engine Architecture Semester 2

Objective This course provides students with an in-depth exploration of 3D game engine architecture. Students will learn state-of-the-art software architecture principles in the context of game engine design, investigate the subsystems typically found in a real production game engine, survey some engine architectures from actual shipping games, and explore how the differences between game genres can affect engine design. Students will participate in individual hands-on lab exercises, and also work together like a real game development team to design and build their own functional game engine by designing and implementing engine subsystems and integrating 3rd party components. Engine subsystems including rendering, audio, collision, physics and game world models. Large-scale C++ software architecture in a games context. Tools pipelines for modern games. Game Engine Architecture: Semester 1 (or equivalent) 2 hrs/week 2 hrs/week Jason Gregory. Game Engine Architecture. AK Peters. ISBN 978-1-56881-413-1. Final grade is based upon the students score on individual labs and assigned problems, the midterm and final exams, and the grades earned on a multi-lab team-based project. Individual Labs and Assigned Problems Midterm Exam Final Exam Team Project: Individual Contribution Team Project: Overall Project Grade TOTAL POSSIBLE 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 100%

Concepts

Prerequisite Lecture Lab Textbook

Grading

Game Engine Architecture

Syllabus, Semester 2

Game Engine Architecture

Semester 2
Course Outline
Week 1 Introduction - Course overview - What is a game engine? - Engine differences between game genres - Survey of runtime engine subsystems - Survey of tools and the asset pipeline Reading:
- Course text: 1.2 1.7

Week 2 3D Math for Games - Review: Vectors, Matrices, Quaternions - Spheres - Lines, line segments and rays - Planes - Splines Reading: Lab: 3D Math Problems

- Course text: 4.1 4.5 (review), 4.6

- Work problems, see typical applications, practice - Create project by copying template - Create simple bouncing ball (Ogre head) in 1D

Pongre 1: One-Dimensional Bouncing Ball

Week 3 More 3D Math for Games - Integer and IEEE floating-point formats - Hardware-accelerated vector math with SIMD - Random number generation Reading: Lab:
- Course text: 3.2.1, 4.7 4.8

Pongre 2: Bouncing, Paddles and Basic Gameplay

Create simple box meshes for paddles Use Ogres OIS human input device API to move paddles Detect collisions with paddles and bounce ball End/reset game if ball misses one of the paddles

Week 4 Software Engineering for Games - C++ best practices - Data, code and memory - Errors, exceptions and assertions

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Game Engine Architecture

Syllabus, Semester 2

Reading: Lab:
- Course text: 3.1, 3.2.2 3.2.5, 3.3 - RECOMMENDED: Lakos: Ch. 0; Ch. 5 sections 5.1 5.3, 5.7

Pongre 3: Congratulations, Its a Game!

- Add HUD, scoring, and personalization of your choice

Week 5 More Software Engineering for Games - Memory allocation and management - Container data structures - Strings and hashed string ids Reading:
- Course text: 5.2 5.4

Lab:

Pongre 4: Final Polish

- Polish your Pongre and make it kick some butt!

Week 6 The Graphics Pipeline - Review: Triangle meshes, materials, texturing, transformation, lighting basics - Pipelining concepts - The rendering pipeline
Tools stage Asset conditioning stage Application stage: Visibility determination and primitive submission Geometry processing and rasterization stages: GPU architecture

- Introduction to global illumination and programmable shaders Reading:

- Course text: 10.1 (review), 10.2.1 10.2.5

Lab: Team Project

- Teams decide on game design, write up minimal design docs

Week 7 Rendering Engine Architecture - Optimization: the driver of rendering engine architecture - Primitive submission and render state management - Sorting, alpha blending and Z pre-pass - Visibility determination and scene graphs - Rendering engine architecture - Visual effects: Particles, overlays, decals, post processing - Graphical tools for debugging and development Reading: Lab:
- Course text: 10.2.6 10.2.7, 10.3 10.5, 9.1 9.8

Team Project
- Teams work on engine and game play systems in parallel

Week 8 MIDTERM EXAM - Midterm review and preparation

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Game Engine Architecture

Syllabus, Semester 2

Reading: Lab:
- Review prior weeks readings

MIDTERM EXAM during lab hours Week 9 Animation System Architecture - Review of character animation fundamentals - Blending: LERP and additive - Procedural animation, IK and other forms of post-processing - Compression techniques - Animation system architecture and pipeline - Interfaces between game characters and animation - Animation state machines and layering Reading:
- Course text: 11.6 11.12 - Ogre Manual (online): Section 8 - RECOMMENDED: Junker: Chapter 9

Lab:

Team Project
- Teams work on engine and game play systems in parallel

Week 10 Advanced Collision Detection - Review: Collision detection basics - Fast-moving bodies and the bullet-through-paper problem - The Gilbert-Johnson-Keerthi (GJK) algorithm - The AABB prune and sweep algorithm - Ray and sphere casting Reading: Lab:
- Course text: 12.3.5.5 12.3.5.7, 12.3.6, 12.3.7

Team Project

- Teams work on engine and game play systems in parallel

Week 11 Advanced Rigid Body Dynamics - Review of point mass linear dynamics, numerical integration - Angular dynamics, moment of inertia - Collision response - Constraints and ragdolls - Typical physics/collision system architectures - API case studies in one or more of: Havok, PhysX, ODE - Integrating physics into your game Reading: Lab:
- Course text: 12.4.5 12.4.9, 12.5

Team Project
- Teams work on engine and game play systems in parallel

Week 12 Gameplay Foundation Systems - Components of the gameplay foundation layer - Runtime object model architectures

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Game Engine Architecture

Syllabus, Semester 2

- Memory management and file I/O for level loading - Streaming game worlds - Memory management for dynamic objects Reading: Lab:
- Course text: 14.2.1.1 14.2.1.2 (review), 14.2.1.3 14.2.1.6, 14.2.2, 14.4, 6.2.2.7

Team Project

- Teams work on engine and game play systems in parallel

Week 13 Engine Subsystem Integration - Review: The game loop, time in games - Updating a multi-object simulation in real time - Integrating rendering, physics and animation into the game loop - Multiprocessor game loops Reading: Lab:
- Course text: 7.1 7.5 (review), 7.6, 14.6.1 14.6.3 (review), 14.6.4

Team Project
- Teams work on engine and game play systems in parallel

Week 14 Elective Topics - Multiplayer networking - Advanced lighting and rendering effects - Terrain systems - Advanced audio - Intro to player mechanics and game cameras - AI foundations: path finding; traversal; perception Reading: Lab:
- TBD

Team Project
- Teams work on engine and game play systems in parallel

Week 15 Wrap-Up - Overflow topics as necessary - Final exam review Lab: Team Project
- Teams perform final integration and add finishing touches - Code freeze one day prior to Gold Master

Exam Week Final Exam and Team Game Project Due

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