CS 199: SPST: Games
Instructor:
Francis Chang (Home page | francis at francischang dot com)
Office hours: By e-mail appointment (for now)
TA:
None....
Office hours: n/a
Time:
Mon / Wed 6:00 - 7:50 PM
Class e-mail list:
psu-cs199-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/psu-cs199/
Room:
EB 325 (Not NH 222)
Current Catalog Description
This course will cover both fine-arts skills, as well as programming/game
scripting. Using Second Life (www.secondlife.com) as a simplified game
development platform, we will cover a range of topics including multimedia
content generation, programming, content management, modeling, texturing,
animations, and physics. We will also explore how art and content are related
to programming in a game environment.
Optional textbook:
Second Life: The Official Guide
by Michael Rymaszewski et al. ISBN: 047009608X
Software
- Image Editors
- Animation Software
- Avimator
- software for creating SL avatar animations (Open Source)
- Poser
- General purpose animation software. Version 5+ is good enough for SL (moneyware)
- Audio Editors
- Movie Editors
- Misc
Useful & Interesting Links
Syllabus
- Optional: Advance Programming
Assignment
- Unless otherwise stated, all assignments have a 2 week deadline
- Week 1 (Apr 2) - Intro
- Assignment 1: (Due Jan 10)
- Week 1 (Apr 4) - Intro to SL mechanics (moving/chatting/building tools)/Discovering SL
- Assignment 2:
- Use your newly aquired skills and build a simple table
- Show & Tell/Exploration Mini-report
- Your task is to explore Second Life and find something (location,
website or object) interesting. You must be able to either visit this place,
see this thing "in person" or obtain (possibly purchase)
a copy of it.
- Post your experience to to the newsgroup, and explain what it
is, how you found it, and why it's cool
- You MUST post a picture or two. Snapzilla and
flickr are two free image
hosting services that you can use.
- Extended deadline on this assignment - Due by April 25th
- Week 2 (Apr 9) - Discovering Building in SL
- Week 2 (Apr 11) - Texturing w. Alpha channels
- Assignment 4:
- On PSU CS199, I have rezzed two "cutouts" of myself. One
is a fully opaque texture, one is with an alpha cut-out. It is also
labelled with my avatar name and my real name.
- Your assignment is to duplicate this, with your own avatar. The
purpose of this exercise is to familiarize yourself with an image
editing program, as well as dealing with alpha-channels.
Week 3 (Apr 16) - Clothing & UV Mapping
- Assignment 5:
- Today's assignment explores UV mapping. Your task for today is to
create a shirt that makes it appear if your avatar is wearing
arm-bands.
- Task 1: Create a shirt using a texture using the provided
templates. This will reveal the texture/polygon UV mapping that SL uses
- Task 2: Draw armbands on your shirt
- Task 3: Make an 'interesting' article of clothing. (shirt, face
makeup, tatoo, pants, shoes, etc)
- Clothing templates
- FYI: CTRL-Shift-r toggles wireframe mode
Week 3 (Apr 18) - Lighting & Shadowing
- Assignment 6:
- Your assignment today is to explore the limitations of the second
life lighting engine. Follow along this tutorial to create an
bject that compensates for SL's lighting engine by using specially
prepared textures.
- I have rezzed an example of a model that has been shaded with and
without this technique at PSU CS199 (11,38,26).
Week 4 (Apr 23) - Animations
- Assignment 3 due
- Assignment 7: Animations
- Today's assignment will require the use of an animation
editor. One solution is to download the open source package qavimator.
-
- Task 1: Upload a pose (1-frame animation) of a superman flying pose
- Task 2: Upload a looping animation of an avatar flapping their
arms
- Task 3: Create and upload one interesting pose and one interesting
animation (not necessarily looping)
Week 4 (Apr 25) -
- Assignment 4 due
- Assignment 8: - Particle Systems
- Today's assignment is about exploring particle systems
- Task 1: On the islands Ashur and PSU CS199, I have rezzed a set of
5 particle systems. Your task is to duplicate them.
- Task 2: Create an interesting and original particle
system. eg. Rain, fog, snow
- llParticleSystem() documentation
- Particle System Template
- You are expected to do this assignment, even if you are
"waiving" doing the other programming assignments by doing
the "hard" versions.
Week 5 (Apr 30) - Introduction to Programming
Week 5 (May 2) - vectors, floats, globals and conditionals
Week 6 (May 7) - loops
Week 6 (May 9) - booleans and functions
Week 7 (Mapy 14) - lists and timers
Week 7 (May 16) - Listens & strings
Week 8 (May 21) - Work on Projects
- Assignment 11 due
- Project Proposal Due
Week 8 (May 23) - Work on Projects
Week 9 (May 28) - Work on Projects
Week 9 (May 30) - Work on Projects
Week 10 (Jun 4,6) - Work on Projects
Last updated... sometimish