Day 1 - Intro & State Machines
As Part of the Game Concentration
Follow up courses:
- Advanced Game Programming, i.e., programming with a game engine. (CSCI 3510, offered in the fall.)
- Computer Graphics, i.e., working with the GPU. (CSCI 4620, offered in the spring.)
Where Do You See Yourself?
- Nonprofessional
- Hobbyist
- Indie (Kickstarter, etc.)
- Professional
- Small company
- AAA (care about money) BIG
JK Rowling Myth of Video Games
Before we begin, we have to crush one myth so that we can start with a clean slate.
Myth: Unity makes video game development so easy, that I will be the next JK Rowling of video game development. I'm going to sit down with Unity and write video games like JK Rowling sat down with Word and wrote Harry Potter.
Writing a book
What parts of writing a book does a word processor help with?
What Word won't do
- Concept or an idea
- Subdivide ideas (outline)
- Characters
- Setting
- Central tension
- Climax
- Conclusion
- Throw away your first Draft
- Therapist
- Start over
- Editor
- Friends to give feedback
- New Friends
What Word will do
- First Draft
- Second Draft
- Third Draft
- Revise, revise, and revise
What's the point? A game engine is a very valuable tool when it comes to writing a game, and just like an author will always use a real use a word processor to write a novel, game companies will use game engines for their games. But writing a game and using a game engine are not the same.
Games are Made by Teams
The following are examples of roles on a game development team. These are people you would either hire (indie/small company) or work with (AAA):
- Director (overall vision and direction)
- Producer (sets/enforces budget and deadlines)
- Artists (lots on any game project, art takes time and is harder to reuse)
- Technical Artist (understands art and engineer)
- Engineer (programmer)
- Testers
- Sound designers/Commposer
- Level designers
- Marketing
- i18n/i10n
- Accounting
- Secretarial
- HR
- Frontend development
- Networking
Three Themes in this Class:
Much of this course will fall under three categories:
- Business of games
- "See" games
- Code games
"See" Games: Mario Bros State Machine
- Title Screen
- Demo
- Loading
- Game Loop
- Death