Instructor: Charlie Roberts
SA: Yihong Xu
Also Starring: Ralph Sutter (IMGD 4500) and Kirsten Roethel (IMGD 4500 SA)
Course Times: Mondays and Thursdays 12-2:50 (lecture, online), Wednesdays 2-3:50 (lab, FL 222)
IMGD 4000 will explore concepts related to technical development using game engines. Game engines are used in a wide range of fields including games, simulations, and architecture, and are an important part of any developer's toolbox, regardles of whether or not a developer is working on a "game".
Topics discussed in this course include:
- Modern game development engines (primarily Unreal) and game engine design patterns
- Game-specific algorithms (path finding, agent-based AI etc.)
- Source control / asset management for game engine
Course communication will primarily occur through the course Discord server; please email the instructor directly if you do not have access to this. Zoom meetings will also be announced in Discord. Canvas will solely be used for posting grades to assignments. Lecture notes / materials will be found in this GitHub repository.
While there are no formal prerequisites for taking this course, students will ideally be familiar with C++, which will be used extensively but not taught explicitly (with some rare exceptions). IMGD 3000 is a great class to familiarize yourself with C++ before taking this course; there are also various courses in Computer Science that teach fundamentals of C/C++ programming.
Students will work in teams in combination with members of IMGD 4500 (Aristic Game Development II) to create an interactive experience in Unreal; this project will account for the bulk of your grade. There will also be separate assignments using Unreal that will be completed indvidually, designed to help ensure that every member of the class has fundamental competency using the UE5.
For the additional assignments in this class, you must complete at least one of the two programming assignments (Agent-based simulation or Pathfinding / A*) and then one other choice from the following list:
- Assignment 1: Agent-based simulation - 15%
- Assignment 2: Pathfinding - 15%
- Final Project Portfolio - 15%
- In-class tutorial - 15%
If you'd like to focus on C++ in Unreal, completing both programming assignments is great! More information about these individual options will be given as the course progresses.
Initial Design Treatment Document DUE MARCH 19th - 5%
Website for project - 15%
Alpha Presentation DUE APRIL 12th - 20%
Beta Presentation - 30%
The final project will be an interactive experience created using Unreal, coded in a mix of C++ and Blueprints. Students will work in teams of (ideally) four developers + two artists on this project, and, generally speaking, the final grade for the project will be shared by all team members. There are multiple milestones for this final project (see above) and each milestone will be accompanied by a document detailing what is expected and what the rubric for grading it will be.
The goal of this class is to both create aesthetically interesting content and understand the code used to create it. In order to understand the code and Unreal more generally, you need to author it yourself; this is particularly the goal of the two individual assignments. That said, there are many ways in which you can assist others without giving them all required code for an assignment. Providing low-level implemetation details (small code fragments that contribute to, but don't complete on their own, major portions of assignments) is welcomed.