On the second floor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering building is what might be the coolest lab on campus.
There aren't any lab benches, just a couple of couches, a few tables and a 200-inch projection screen. Attached to the screen is an Xbox 360. But they don't play games here - they make them.
Professor Pradeep Sen is teaching the class that has filled this room every Monday and Wednesday of the semester. The purpose of the class is to teach the programmatic approach to generating 3D images. The last four weeks have been consumed by the final project, wherein students take what they have learned and create a game with it.
They use "XNA Creators Club" to program their games, and it's open to anyone with a computer and an Xbox 360. Using XNA, an independent developer doesn't have to worry about creating the backbone of a game - the networking and the control interfaces being notable examples of this. This allows a developer to concentrate on the meat of any game - the graphics. While the focus of the class is developing real-time graphics, the students are not expected to create professional-level art assets - model textures and sound effects take a backseat to the programming.
"The most challenging thing about making a game isn't just the graphics but the interface," Sen said.
Without a good interface, a game is nothing more than a series of unrelated images - and good interfaces are a part of what Sen is teaching to his students.
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Each of the students in the class is working on a different game, and the games vary in genre. One of the students is making a racing game, where the participants control RC cars that zip around the floor of someone's bedroom. Another is making a space fighter, in the tradition of "R-Type," and a third is developing a sort of circular "Tetris" clone.
"As development continues, progress goes exponentially up," Sen said.
Considering that the students have been working on the games for only four weeks, the progress they have made is impressive. Each of the games demoed were in playable form. The students have entered what is commonly referred to as the "bug-squashing" phase.
It's a good thing, too. As the final phase of the project, before the games are actually released to the general public on Xbox Live, Sen's class is holding an open house. Anyone who ventures over to the first floor atrium of the ECE building will have an opportunity to play each of the games that the class has created. Finally, at the end of the day, an independent panel will judge each of the games and pick the best one.
Sen has high hopes for the future of the program, which is sponsored by state funds. Someday, he wants to see other departments working on game projects - perhaps one day the Art Department will create the art assets, the English Department will write the storylines and Media Arts will do the sound.
Of course, the most important element in creating a video game isn't the programming, or the art, or the story.
"The games just have to be fun," Sen said.
Open House
ECE Atrium
Today, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Competition
Today, 5-6:30 p.m.
