Oct 22:
Sign up for a slot
to meet for your project midterm demo.
All presentations will be in the game lab at the designated times.
Please arrive ten minutes before your slot starts so that you can get logged
in and set up. One demo per group.
Sept 2: Welcome to 3501! If you are interested in getting a head start, install XNA 3.1 on your computer and try out the starter kits.
For some advice on using XNA with Visual Studio 2010 (or other environment, for that matter) check out this post on Nick Gravelyn's blog.
You might want to look at last year's final to get some practice and some idea about the type of questions. This year's exam will have more pseudocode than last year's did.
To help in studying, you may be interested to see last year's midterm. The best way to use it is to study a lot, then make a closed-book attempt at this midterm to self-evaluate.
The midterm will cover material up to halfway through the "Procedural" slides, just to the end of Perlin noise (i.e., not including cellular texture).
You may bring one sheet of notes to the midterm as a memory aid (one standard-sized piece of paper, both sides).
Getting started in XNA (sprites)
Some more math including Quaternions
The Perspective transformation and a camera
Illumination, esp. the 3-term lighting model
Terrain synthesis (with bonus material on L-systems)
Rotational physics (rigid-body motion)
Impulse model of collision resolution
Illumination with the 3-term lighting model
Screen-space special effects: download the Camera demo
and look at the image.fx file, which contains pixel shaders for
SSE.
Partial submarine demo (no torque)
Assignment 2, part one: vector math. Due in class Sept 29.
Assignment 2, part two: A cannon. Due Sept 29.
Assignment 3: Firing the cannon (transformations). Due Oct 6.
Assignment 4: Pixel and vertex shaders (transformations and lighting). Due Oct 20.
Assignment 5, part one: Quaternions and lighting review. Due in class Nov 10.
Assignment 5, part two: A screen-space special effect. Due Nov 10.
Assignment 6: Particle systems. Due Nov 17.
Assignment 7: Physical simulation (bonus assignment). Due Dec 2.
Project proposal deadline: Friday, Oct 1. Hand in through WebCT.
All that is needed is a 1-2 page description of the basic project idea,
plus a list of team members and a planned timeline for when you will
have completed the subtasks of the overall project.
Project presentations: During class time in the game lab on
Monday, Nov 29, and Wednesday, Dec 1. Sign up for a lot in class or
send me an email to get one of the remaining slots.
Instructor: Dr. David Mould
Office: 5346 Herzberg
Office Hours: specific hours TBA or by appointment
Email: mould at scs
TA email: TBA