CS 179n: Graphics and Electronic Games

General

• Discussion: Friday 5:00-5:50 PM, Student Success Center 308
• Lab A: Wednesday 3:00-5:50 PM, Chung 139
• Lab B: Tuesday 3:00-5:50 PM, Chung 143
• Syllabus: pdf.

Instructor

Craig Schroeder

Office: WCH 309
Office Hours: after discussion or by appointment

Email: craigs@cs.ucr.edu

Teaching Assistant

Chen Zhao

Office: WCH 227
Office Hours: TBD

Email: czhao078@ucr.edu

Course Summary

This course covers the planning, design, implementation, testing, and documentation of a graphics- or electronic game-related system. Incorporates using techniques presented in previous related courses. Emphasizes professional and ethical responsibilities; the importance of security and privacy; the need to stay current on technology; and its global impact on economics, society, and the environment.

Course learning goals

The learning goals for the course are the following:

• Learn to work in a small team to deliver a significant project in a fixed window of time.
• Deepen your knowledge and experience in a specific area of graphics (e.g., rendering, simulation, games).
• Gain awareness of the broader societal impacts of and the issues surrounding electronic games and other computer graphics applications.

Discussion Plan

Each team is responsible for a technical presentation to be given during the discussion section. The technical presentation consist of two parts:

• Presentation (18 min). Each team chooses a technical topic related to their project and gives a presentation about it during the discussion.
• Discussion (5 min). Each students will write down one question for each presentation on a slip of paper. Students are strongly encouraged (but not required) to ask these questions during this time. These slips will be used to track attendance, and they will also be given to the presenters in anonymized form. While presenters are encouraged to read through the questions, they are not expected to answer them.

Attendance and Etiquette

Attendance at discussions and labs is required and counts for part of your participation grade. One unexcused absence from discussion is permitted without penalty. Otherwise, if you cannot make a discussion or lab, please email the instructors ahead of time explaining why you cannot attend. No recording is permitted.

Assessment

You will be assessed on the following:

• (10%) Discussion participation
• (10%) Technical presentation
• (80%) Project
  • (5%) Features/Proposal
  • (15%) Demo 1 - Lab 5
  • (15%) Demo 2 - Lab 8
  • (20%) Demo 3 - Lab 10
  • (5%) Report and Video
  • (20%) Individual Contribution

Course Schedule

Team assignments, pre-proposals, and proposals are due on eLearn by end of day Sunday (two days after the discussion). Demos will be performed during lab itself. Scrum spreadsheets are due at the start of the lab.

Academic Integrity

Your group projects are expected to be original. You must clearly document use of all external tools and resources, including software, geometry, assets, etc. You must comply with all licenses and copyright restrictions, and adhere to attribution guidelines. Please familiarize yourself with the campus academic integrity policy which can be found here.

Project Teams

Project teams must have 5 members, with teams of 4 permitted as needed. Some students have scheduling conflicts with the first or last hour of lab. No team may have both a member with a first-hour conflict and a member with a last-hour conflict; no exceptions. Every team must be able to fully commit to a contiguous two-hour block of time each lab, and all members must be present during lab for those two hours.

Project Deliverables

Team Information. During Lab 1, students should form project teams. The TAs may assign students who have not joined a group to a new or existing group. By the end of the weekend after the first lab, each team must submit the team information form via eLearn. This will include team name, team members and emails, a description of time conflicts, brief project description, presentation topic, and communication channel (Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, etc.).

Features/Proposal. At the end of Week 2, the team will submit the following:

• Proposal (a brief overview of the project). The proposal should be 2-5 pages. It should include
  • Style of game (FPS, RPG, side-scrolling, ...)
  • Game narrative/plot
  • Project scope (how much do you plan to do, and where are you drawing the line?)
  But otherwise, the content is quite flexible. Students often mention things like
  • Which assets you plan to use (or whether they will be self-made)
  • Characters in the game
  • Description of what the world will be like
  • Comparisons with existing games
  Mostly the goal of the proposal is to get teams thinking about the longer vision of the project.
• The team scrum spreadsheet. At this stage, it should contain a list of features that the project will implement. A feature centers around a user story, has a clear set of acceptance criteria, and can be demoed. This is the group's vision for the project they want to deliver at the end of the quarter. The team should distribute 100 story points among the separate features. Story points reflect the estimated relative effort required for that feature. If a feature is too large (can't be completed within one demo cycle), break it down into smaller features.

Demos. There will be three in-lab demos: week 5 (~30 story points), week 8 (~70 story points), and week 10 (~100 story points). The grades will be determined based on the features demonstrated and the amount of work completed as indicated in the weekly spreadsheet submission.

Weekly spreadsheet submission. Starting in Week 3, each team should submit the current version of their scrum spreadsheet (on eLearn) by the beginning of their lab section. This will show the state of the spreadsheet at the end of prior week's sprint. The burndown chart should be updated to reflect work accomplished.

Individual Contribution. Assessment of individual contribution will be based on three factors: task allocation as indicated in the spreadsheet throughout the quarter, individual self-assessment of contribution, and team assessment of each individual's contributions.

Report. The report should be ~3-5 pages (not including pictures) and should include the following items:

• Overview
• Game Description (e.g., levels, characters, game play)
• Implementation (e.g., game engine, scripts, algorithms, tools)
• Project Post Mortem
  • What tasks were accomplished?
  • What planned tasks were not done?
  • How did scrum work for you?
  • What would you do differently?

Video. A ~30s video of your game being played.

Project Topics

Students generally create games in this class, though other projects options may be considered by the instructor. Design and develop a novel 2D or 3D computer game. You game should have an original narrative. You have a lot of freedom in designing your games. You may also make use of freely available game assets, music, etc., as long as they are used strictly in accordance with their license requirements and copyright, and are properly attributed. Each asset (original or licensed) must be clearly documented in the project spreadsheet.