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CS638: Computer Game Technology

Fall 2001

Instructor: Stephen Chenney

Email: schenney@cs.wisc.edu
Office: 6387 Computer Sciences and Statistics
Office Hours: Tues 1-2, Thurs 1-2 in B240

Project Pages

Announcements

Stage 4 Grading 2-5 Monday Dec 17 and 2-5 Tuesday Dec 18 in B240.

Extra Office Hours 2-5 Monday Dec 17 and 2-5 Tuesday Dec 18 in B240.

Final Exam Info:

8:30am, Wed Dec 19. Note the late start time (the timetable says 7:45).
Room 1221.
1 hour, 15 minutes in duration.
Material covered after the midterm, and nothing that was covered in the midterm. In other words, lectures 16 through 26. It turns out there won't be any questions related to the guest lectures in November.
A double sided page of anything is allowed.
A sample exam and the corresponding sample solutions are now available. For effective study, try to do the sample before even looking at the solutions. Also, this sample is less representative of the material that was covered and that might be on the exam, just because we covered lots of material.

Calendar

Most recent at the top.

Dec 11 The last of Collision Detection Game networking Lecture notes.	Dec 13 Cheat Prevention Lecture notes. Chapter 1.11 of Game Programming Gems discusses a cheat discouraging network packet structure.
Dec 4 Collision Detection Part 2 Lecture notes. Chapters 4.5 and 4.6 of Game Programming Gems covers some of this material, but not particularly well.	Dec 6 Collision Detection Part 3 Lecture notes.
Nov 27 Dynamic Path Planning Flocking Models Particle Systems Lecture notes. Chapter 3.7 of Game Programming Gems covers flocking. There are a wealth of online resources on flocking and particle systems. It seems that everyone with too much time on their hands has implemented one or the other.	Nov 29 Collision Detection part 1 Lecture notes.
Nov 20 Improving A* Paths Hierarchical path planning Pre-planning paths Lecture notes. Chapters 3.3-3.6 of Game Programming Gems cover some of this material, as does 2.1 and 4.13. A Gamasutra article also makes for interesting reading, as do many other online articles on game path planning.	Nov 22 Thanksgiving
Nov 13 Motion Capture in Games with Prof Mike Gleicher	Nov 15 Networking Infrastructure for Games with Prof Paul Barford
Nov 6 Fuzzy Logic Neural Nets Lecture notes. Chapters 3.8 and 3.9 of Game Programming Gems cover this material.	Nov 8 Path Planning I Lecture notes. Chapters 3.3 and 3.6 of Game Programming Gems cover this material.
Oct 30 Intro to AI Finite state machines Lecture notes. Chapters 3.0 and 3.1 of Game Programming Gems are of interest here.	Nov 1 Decision trees Rule-based systems Lecture notes.
Oct 23 Terrain LOD Lecture notes. The algorithm described in class is described in even more detail in the course notes. Also see a Gamasutra article on implementing ROAM.	Oct 25 Midterm In class, 1 hour long. You may use: Writing implements, ruler, one double-sided letter-sized piece of paper with anything written (or drawn) on it.
Oct 16 Visibility Lecture notes. Chapter 4.8 of Game Programming Gems is relevant here.	Oct 18 Terrain Generation Lecture notes. Chapters 4.16, 4.17 , 4.18 and 4.19 are relevant here.
Oct 9 Octrees Lecture notes. Chapters 4.10 and 4.11 of Game Programming Gems are relevant here.	Oct 11 Kd-trees and BSP-Trees Lecture notes.
Oct 2 Level-Of-Detail Lecture notes. My primary resources for this lecture were the papers by Michael Garland and Paul Heckbert on Quadric Mesh Simplification. http://graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/~garland/. Michael's help in preparing this lecture (donating slides) is very much appreciated. You should read chapter 4.9 of Game Programming Gems (after this lecture).	Oct 4 More Level-Of-Detail Lecture notes. Again, Michael Garland's help in preparing this lecture (donating slides) is very much appreciated. You should read chapter 4.12 of Game Programming Gems. It has lots of implementation details on progressive meshes.
Sept 25 Shadows part 2 Vertex and Pixel Shaders Lecture notes I used Watt and Policarpo for a shadow volume reference. Much of the information on vertex and pixel shaders came from the Nvidia developers' web site.	Sept 27 Billboards Mesh Compression basics Lecture notes.
Sept 18 Light maps, Bump maps with multitexturing Mulit-Pass part 1 Lecture notes	Sept 20 Mulit-Pass part 2 Shadows part 1 Lecture notes You must read chapters 5.7 and 5.8 of Game Programming Gems. I used the OpenGL Programming Guide, and Watt and Policarpo as references.
Sept 11 Graphics review and Texturing Lecture notes	Sept 13 Environment mapping, Light maps Lecture notes Chapters you might read after this lecture: 5.5, 5.6, 5.9, 5.11
Sept 4 Introduction to Computer Game Development and CS 638 Lecture notes	Sept 6 Programming Interactive Systems Understanding Lag Lecture notes Reading: "Game Programming Gems", Chapters 1.1 and 1.12. Anything else in the first section is fair game at this point, but much of it is useful for production systems, rather than the level of development you'll be doing in class.

People Who Helped

I am indepted to Michael Garland, who provided slides for use in the LOD section of the class, and John Laird, who provided the slides for the AI tutorial he and Mike van Lent gave at the 2001 GDC.

Software For The Course

LithTech have generously provided us with software for use in this course.

General Course Information

This course is about the technology that goes into creating computer games and other interactive entertainment. The focus is on 3D gaming and the graphics, artificial intelligence and networking technology that is employed in games.

Schedule
2:30 - 3:45 TR in 1221 Computer Sciences and Statistics
Pre-Requisites
CS 559 or equivalent knowledge.
Grading Policy (Subject to change)
- Project (4 phases): 15% * 4 = 60%
- Midterm: 20%
- Final: 20%
Syllabus (Tentative)
Textbooks
- Mark DeLoura (Ed.), "Game Programming Gems", Charles River Media, 2000. (Required)
- Alan Watt and Fabio Policarpo, "3D Games: Real-time Rendering and Software Technology, Volume 1", Addison-Welsey, 2001. (Helpful)
"Game Programming Gems" was not intended to serve as a textbook, but it contains the most useful distillation of gaming technology, so we'll be using it. Co-incidentally, it is also a great reference for smart C++ programming tricks. The Watt and Policarpo book is intended as a textbook, but gives sub-standard coverage of AI and networking. Furthermore, much of it covers identical material to that in Watt's 3D Graphics textbook used in CS 559 for Spring 2001. Students who have not taken 559 might wish to purchase a copy. It is not likely to be a textbook for 559 in the future.
Additional Readings
Assorted additional material will be available off this web site as required.
Lab Resources
The computing lab, B240, contains new machines with fast graphics cards and other nice features. LithTech, the software required for the class, is as of now ONLY installed on machines in that lab. Students in CS638-1, and Computer Graphics CS559, have priority on these machines.
Class email alias
cs638-1list@cs.wisc.edu
Class email archive