Module details for Game Programming and System Architectures

Description

This module builds on Graphics Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms 1 and Computer Architecture and introduces the necessary components needed to develop a 3D physics-based game application considering the hardware.

Aims

To enable students to integrate various components (3D graphics, physics, audio) and to develop a 3D game application that makes effective use of modern computer/console systems

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module the student should be able to:

1.  Describe 3D graphics, audio and physics functionality within a 3D games-application.

2.  Implement key game components - 3D graphics, audio, gameplay and physics on games console hardware.

3.  Design, implement and evaluate applications that demonstrate enhanced performance in relation to device hardware e.g. multithreading

Indicative Content

1 Games Hardware (Introduction to Consoles)

Device Memory and CPU/GPU architecture characteristics - Cache architectures, locality, alignment, virtual memory, memory allocation techniques, CPU/GPU architecture: Pipelines, superscalar architectures, branch prediction, out-of-order execution, hyperthreading, multicore, NUMA

2 User Interfaces

Methods to exploit touchscreen and controller pads user inputs.

3 Audio Engines

3D positional audio – considering the position, orientation and velocity of the listener and the position, orientation and velocity of the emitter.

4 Physics Engines

Collision detection, Rigid Body Dynamics using Box2D

5 Character Animation

Types of character animation and techniques of character animation

6 Polish and Optimisation

Putting it all together – How – where to parallelise recognising console architecture

7 Multithreading

Cross referencing Memory architecture and CPU architecture

Teaching and Learning Work Loads