Developing games of commercial scale and quality is an incredibly challenging task, whether the game is intended for entertainment or serious applications. The purpose of this course is to provide practical experience in the various aspects of the development of a large scale game project. Through a group project, this course will examine the concepts, theories, tools, technologies, and techniques for code and content generation for modern games.
| Lecture Hours: | 4:30 - 6:30pm, Wednesdays, SH 3305 |
| Prerequisites: | Registration in the Minor in Game Development |
| Corequisites: | Computer Science 482a/b, 483a/b |
Note: Unless you have either the prerequisites for this course or written special permission from your Dean to enrol in it, you may be removed from this course and it will be deleted from your record. This decision may not be appealed. You will receive no adjustment to your fees in the event that you are dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.
One instructor will be managing and supervising the project aspects of this course:
| Instructor: | Michael J. Katchabaw |
| Office: | MC 28H |
| Office Hours: | 10:30 - 11:30am, Wednesdays |
| 10:30 - 11:30am, Fridays | |
| E-Mail: | katchab@csd.uwo.ca |
| Phone: | UWO extension 84059 |
There are no required texts for this course. There are five possible recommended texts, however, to help support the project. They are available for purchase from the University Bookstore and, if possible, a copy of each will be made available on 2 hour reserve loan from the Allyn and Betty Taylor Library.
Additional references and suggested readings may be provided throughout the course as the project requires them. Please check back to the course website for updates and more information.
Lecture time will not be used for the delivery of lectures in the traditional sense. Instead, this time will be primarily used for organizing and tracking the status of project milestones in the course. We may also bring in guest lecturers from the games industry, and we may use this time for their talks. It is important to note that there will not be class held on every Wednesday throughout the year; further details on class scheduling will be posted on the course website.
The CS480y website is accessible at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS480y. Class and project information will be posted on this website on a fairly regular basis. You are responsible for reading this information frequently.
Each student will have access to an account on the Computer Science Department senior undergraduate computing facility, GAUL. In accepting the GAUL account, a student agrees to abide by the department's Rules of Ethical Conduct.
Note: After-hours access to certain Computer Science lab rooms is by student card. If a student card is lost, a replacement card will no longer open these lab rooms, and the student must bring the new card to the I/O counter. Likewise, if a student card ceases to provide access where it should, it should be brought the I/O counter as well. There, the operator will swipe the card, record the complaint and send the information to the Systems Group who will send notice when they have fixed the problem.
We will occasionally need to send e-mail messages to the whole class, or to students individually. E-Mail will be sent to the UWO e-mail address assigned to students by Information Technology Services (ITS), i.e. your e-mail address @uwo.ca. It is each student's responsibility to read this e-mail on a frequent and regular basis, or to have it forwarded to an alternative e-mail address if preferred. See the ITS website for directions on forwarding e-mail.
However, you should note that e-mail at ITS (your UWO account) and other e-mail providers such as hotmail.com or yahoo.com may have quotas or limits on the amount of space they can use. If you let your e-mail accumulate there, your mailbox may fill up and you may lose important e-mail from your instructors. Losing e-mail that you have forwarded to an alternative e-mail address is not an excuse for not knowing about the information that was sent.
Grades will be based on both a group project worth 80% of the student's total mark, and an individual mark worth 20%. There are four milestones throughout the course, with each requiring different group and individual elements to be submitted, as discussed below. If for any reason the project schedule given below cannot be adhered to, the project marks will be prorated accordingly.
| Milestone 1: | 7%, due October 31, 2007 |
| Individual: Work log (2%) | |
| Group: Project report (5%) | |
| Milestone 2: | 26%, due December 5, 2007 |
| Individual: Work log (2%), peer and self evaluation (4%) | |
| Group: Project report (5%), demonstration (10%), presentation (5%) | |
| Milestone 3: | 17%, due February 20, 2008 |
| Individual: Work log (2%) | |
| Group: Project report (5%), demonstration (10%) | |
| Milestone 4: | 50%, due April 9, 2008 |
| Individual: Work log (2%), peer and self evaluation (4%), instructor evaluation (4%) | |
| Group: Project report (10%), demonstration (10%), presentation (10%), source code submission (10%) |
Submission of Milestones
Scholastic offences are taken seriously and students are directed to read the appropriate policy, specifically, the definition of what constitutes a Scholastic Offence, at the following Web site: http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/appeals/scholoff.pdf.
Plagiarism: Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence. Please note, however, that students are not allowed to make use of the work of others unless explicitly instructed to do so in the description of an assignment.
All projects are to be exclusively your own work. While project work requires you to work in teams, each team is expected to act individually. You may discuss approaches to problems among yourselves; however, the actual details of the work (coding, documentation, etc.) must be an individual effort. Incidents that are judged to be the result of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Undergraduate Chair. The selection of penalty to be applied is up to the Chair, with consultation of the instructor.
The standard departmental penalty for assignments that are judged to be the result of academic dishonesty is, for the student's first offence, a mark of zero for the assignment, with an additional penalty equal to the weight of the assignment also being applied. You are responsible for reading and respecting the Computer Science Department's policy on Scholastic Offences. and Rules of Ethical Conduct.
The University of Western Ontario uses software for plagiarism checking. Students may be required to submit their written work and programs in electronic form for plagiarism checking.
All required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to the commercial plagiarism detection software under license to the University for detection of plagiarism. All papers submitted for such checking will be included as source documents in the reference database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement, currently between The University of Western Ontario and Turnitin.com (http://www.turnitin.com/).