392127 Video Game Programming (V) (WiSe 2024/2025)

This course provides an introduction to video game programming and computer graphics. The course material will cover game programming techniques and technologies, including rendering, data structures, memory management, real-time software development for games, start-to-finish video game design and implementation, project management, teamwork and team management. The course also covers modules on AI, human-computer interaction, and physical simulation in game worlds.

Students will learn to plan, manage and implement from scratch a video game over the course term. They will learn to apply theoretical knowledge in a practical, real-life setting and acquire hands-on problem solving skills. The skills learned are highly relevant in industries beyond the game industry. Efficient C++ implementation, software development of large-scale systems, version control, and teamwork are crucial skills that often fall short in classical lectures.

The course is interactive, including cross-play sessions where students play-test the games from other teams, milestone presentations where teams update the rest of the course on their development status and challenges faced, and individual team meetings with the tutors.

• Example games from previous years at UBC: https://www.students.cs.ubc.ca/~cs-427/games/
• Prior offerings of this course at UBC: https://www.students.cs.ubc.ca/~cs-427/

Requirements for participation, required level

This course builds upon required BSc Informatik courses from the first three terms: Prinzipien Der Programmierung, Mathematic für Informatik 1, Mathematic für Informatik 2, Software Engineering, and Datenbanken und Informationssyteme.

You require these courses or an equivalent qualification in C++/object oriented programming languages, vector and matrix algebra, and a basic understanding of memory and algorithms, including graph and search algorithms. Please reach out to the instructor if in doubt.

Experience in game programming or computer graphics is not required as these concepts will be introduced. This course is complementary to the Visual Computing lecture; it is beneficial to take both but the order is not important.

The course is given in English but examinations can be performed in German on request. It can be taken as IdniErg and StructErg within the Informatik Kernfach and also in other programs through a simple application form (reach out).

Bibliography

There is not a single book or script but plenty of high-quality online resources:

• Good intro to ECS (for A0 - Task 1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-CILn2w9K0
• Modern OpenGL Introduction (for A1 and ongoing): https://learnopengl.com/Introduction
• Sprite generation tool: http://piskelapp.com
• Collision detection and more graphics (list of links): http://realtimerendering.com
• AI - basics (decision trees, finite state machine, behavior trees, and more): https://www.gamedev.net/articles/programming/artificial-intelligence/the-totalbeginners-guide-to-game-ai-r4942/
• AI - behavior trees (the variant we explain in the lecture): https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/behavior-trees-for-ai-how-they-work
• Simulation - Ordinary Differentiable Equations (ODEs): https://people.csail.mit.edu/jsolomon/share/book/numerical_book.pdf (Chapter 15, Page 303)
• Video Game Physics: https://www.toptal.com/game/video-game-physics-part-i-an-introduction-to-rigid-body-dynamics
• Templates in C++: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/oldtutorial/templates/