Let's Make a Tennis Game! - Introduction To Game Programming

Wednesday, 16 December | 5:30 AM - 9:15 AM | Room 501

In recent years, games have become more sophisticated and demanding, with high-level technologies such as AI, physics, and graphics. At the same time, the knowledge required to be a game programmer is becoming increasingly unclear. This course attempts to clarify this situation by guiding non-game programmers through the development process for a simple tennis game and providing an overview of game-programming concepts.

The course begins with a 2D game requiring minimal preliminary knowledge and then adds more advanced elements such as 3D CG, audio, effects, interface, cameras, and shaders. The shader section of the course covers the graphics-engine architecture required to speed up the rendering without sacrificing the look by taking advantage of the game design. The same idea was used in Virtua Tennis 3.

This course is unique in that it focuses on the process of development by adding elements one by one, rather than explaining elements of a finished game separately. Attendees learn how a game gets closer to its complete form step by step, assuring that a game can be developed by one person, provided its scale is small enough.

Level

Beginner

Presentation Language

Presented in Japanese

Prerequisites

A fair amount of experience in playing computer games and programming and code-reading skills in C++ (or C#, Java). The mathematics of 3D CG and knowledge of DirectX/OpenGL APIs are helpful but not necessary.

Instructor(s)

Takashi Hirayama
Jun Saito
Sega Corporation

Instructor Bio(s)

Takashi Hirayama
Takashi Hirayama is a programmer at Sega Corporation in the AM R&D #2 Department. After finishing his masters degree at the University of Kyoto, he joined Sega to work on Virtual-On Marz for PS2, where he was in charge of the effects. He then worked on the graphics engine and the cloth simulation library for Virtua Tennis 3 for arcade and PS3. He has also authored an introductory book for game programmers, in Japanese.