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�

20CD913 - Game Design

Department : Computer Science and Design

Batch / Year : 2022 – 2026 / III

Created by : Ms.S.Mahalakshmi

Ms.B.Maheswari

Date : 15.06.2024�

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1. Contents

S. No.	Contents
1	Contents
2	Course Objectives
3	Prerequisites
4	Syllabus
5	Course Outcomes
6	CO-PO Mapping
7	Lecture Plan
8	Activity Based Learning
9	Lecture Notes
10	Assignments
11	Part- A Questions & Answers
12	Part-B Questions
13	Supportive Online Courses
14	Real Time Applications
15	Content beyond the Syllabus
16	Assessment Schedule
17	Prescribed Text books & Reference Books
18	Mini Project Suggestions

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Unit - II Content

Chapter No.	Contents
2.1	Game AI
2.2	AI model
2.3	Algorithms for Movement
2.4	Path finding
2.5	Decision making
2.6	Tactical and Strategic AI
2.7	Procedural Content Generation
2.8	Board Games

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2. Course Objectives

Understand the Fundamental principles of Game Design and Development.
Know the importance and application of Game AI.
Learn the detailed processes of typical Game Engine.
Implement simple 2D games using the design and development process learnt.
Implement simple 3D games using the design and development process learnt.

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3. Prerequisites

20CD913-GAME DESIGN
VR Development platform such as Unity
VR Software
VR Headset

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4. Syllabus

20CD913	Game Design(Lab Integrated)	L	T	P		C
		2	0	2		3
OBJECTIVES: • To Understand the Fundamental principles of Game Design and Development. • To know the importance and application of Game AI. • To learn the detailed processes of typical Game Engine. • To Implement simple 2D games using the design and development process learnt. • To Implement simple 3D games using the design and development process learnt.
UNIT I	GAME DESIGN FUNDAMENTALS				6+6
Role of Game Designer, Structure of Games, major genres, game concepts, game worlds, working with formal elements, dramatic elements and system dynamics, storytelling, game play, core mechanics, game balancing, principles of Level Design, Conceptualization, prototyping, play testing.
UNIT II	GAME AI				6+6
Game AI, AI model, algorithms for Movement, Path finding, Decision making, Tactical and Strategic AI, Procedural Content Generation, Board Games
UNIT III	GAME ENGINE				6+6
Rendering engine and pipeline, Scene Graph, Level of Detail, sorting, Animation Systems, Collision and Rigid Body dynamics.
UNIT IV	2D GAME DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION				6+6
GoDot game engine Designing and Prototyping a simple 2D Game, including character design, storytelling, levels. Implementing the Game in pygame or Godot engine or equivalent
UNIT V	3D GAME DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION				6+6
Designing and Prototyping a simple 3D Game, including character design, storytelling, levels. Implementing the Game in pygame or Godot engine or Blender or equivalent
Lab Exercises: (Note: Students can work in small teams of 2 or 3 for the experiments) 1. Install any Game Engine (Ex: Godot engine / equivalent) and understand the features and functions. 2. Install Blender and learn some basic 3D graphics including rendering pipeline, textures, coordinate systems, lighting, simple animation .

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4. Syllabus Contd...

3. Experiment with creating and importing simple 2D / 3D characters, into the work environment. 4. Design and document a simple 2D game, following the principles of game design, including genre, characters, game world, characters, game mechanics, levels. 5. Implement the 2D game using pygame / equivalent tools. 6. Implement any simple path finding algorithm and incorporate the same in the 2D game. 7. Implement any other simple AI techniques, to the game 8. Design and document a simple 3D game, following the principles of game design, including genre, characters, game world, characters, game mechanics, levels. 9. Implement the 3D game using Blender / equivalent tools. 10. Evaluate the design and the implementation of the games.
TOTAL: 30+30 = 60 PERIODS
OUTCOMES: At the end of this course, the students will be able to: CO1: Use the Fundamental principles of Game Design and Development in context CO2: Able to apply AI techniques in Game Design and Development ∙ CO3: Thoroughly understand the detailed processes of the Game Engine ∙ CO4: Design and Implement simple 2D games using the design and development process learnt. CO5: Design and Implement simple 3D games using the design and development process learnt.
TEXT BOOKS: 1. Ernest Adams, “Fundamentals of Game Design”, 3rd Edition, Pearson Education, 2015. 2. Ian Millington, “AI for Games”, CRC Press, 3 rd edition, 2019. 3. Jung Hyun Han, “3D Graphics for Game Programming”, Delmar Cengage Learning, 2011.
REFERENCES: 1.Tracy Fullerton: Game Design Workshop, A Play centric Approach to Creating Innovative Games,4 th Edition, CRC Press, 2018. 2.Jason Gregory, “Game Engine Architecture”, CRC Press, Third Edition, 2018. 3.Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, “Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design”, New Riders Press, 2012. 4. Jesse Schell, “The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses”, Third Edition, CRC Press, 2019. 5.Sanjay Madhav, “Game Programming in C++: Creating 3D Games”, Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition
SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS: Blender, Unity, Unreal Engine/Equivalent

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5. Course Outcomes

CO1: Use the Fundamental principles of Game Design and Development in context.

CO2: Able to apply AI techniques in Game Design and Development∙

CO3: Thoroughly understand the detailed processes of the Game Engine∙

CO4: Design and Implement simple 2D games using the design and development process learnt.

CO5: Design and Implement simple 3D games using the design and development process learnt.

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6. CO - PO Mapping

	POs and PSOs
COs	PO1	PO2	PO3	PO4	PO5	PO6	PO7	PO8	PO9	PO10	PO11	PO12	PSO1	PSO2	PSO3
CO1	3	2	3	2	3				3			3	3	3	2
CO2	3	2	2	2	3				2			2	2	3	1
CO3	2	2	3	2	3				3			3	3	2	2
CO4	3	2	3	2	3				3			2	3	3	1
CO5	3	3	2	2	3				2			3	3	3	1

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7. Lecture Plan- Unit II

S. No.	Topic	No. of Periods	Proposed Date	Actual Lecture Date	Pertaining CO	Taxonomy Level	Mode of Delivery
1	Game AI	1			CO2	K1	PPT
2	AI model	1			CO2	K3	PPT
3	Algorithms for Movement	1			CO2	K2	PPT
4	Path finding	1			CO2	K2	Chalk & Talk
5	Decision making	1			CO2	K2	PPT
6	Tactical and Strategic AI	1			CO2	K2	PPT
7	Procedural Content Generation	1			CO2	K3	Chalk & Talk
8	Board Games	1			CO2	K4	PPT

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8. Activity Based Learning

Learning Method	Activity
Learn by Practical	Blender & Unity Software available for Practice
Learn by Questioning	Using Shortcut Keys
Learn by doing Hands-on	Practice in Lab

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9. Lecture Notes

UNIT I GAME AI 6+6

Game AI, AI model, algorithms for Movement, Path finding, Decision making, Tactical and Strategic AI, Procedural Content Generation, Board Games

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2.1 Game AI

Game AI :

Pac-Man was the first game many people remember playing with fledgling AI. Up to that point there had been Pong clones with opponent-controlled bats (following the ball up and down) and countless shooters in the Space Invaders mold. But Pac-Man had definite enemy characters that seemed to conspire against you, moved around the level just as you did, and made life tough.
Pac-Man relied on a very simple AI technique: a state machine. Each of the four monsters (later called ghosts after a disastrously flickering port to the Atari 2600) occupied one of three states: chasing, scattering (heading for the corners at specific time intervals), and frightened (when Pac-Man eats a power up).
For each state they choose a tile as their target, and turn toward it at each junction. In chase mode, each ghost chooses the target according to a slightly different hard-coded rule, giving them their personalities.
Sports games and driving games in particular have their own AI challenges, some of which remain largely unsolved (dynamically calculating the fastest way around a race track, for example, would also be helpful to motorsport teams), while role-playing games (RPGs) with complex character interactions still implemented as conversation trees feel overdue for something better.
The AI in most games addresses three basic needs: the ability to move characters, the ability to make decisions about where to move, and the ability to think tactically or strategically. Even though we have a broad range of approaches, they all fulfill the same three basic requirements.

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2.2 Game AI

THE COMPLEXITY FALLACY:

It is a common mistake to think that the more complex the AI in a game, the better the characters will look to the player.
Creating good AI is all about matching the requirements of the game to the right behaviors and the right algorithms to produce them.
There is a bewildering array of techniques in this book, and the right one isn’t always the most obvious choice.
Countless examples of difficult to implement, complex AI have resulted in poor, or even stupid looking behavior. Equally, a very simple technique can be perfect, when used well.

THE PERCEPTION WINDOW:

Unless your AI is controlling an ever-present sidekick or a one-on-one enemy, chances are your player will only come across a character for a short time.
This can be a significantly short time for disposable guards whose life purpose is to be shot. More difficult enemies can be on-screen for a few minutes as their downfall is plotted and executed.
When we seek to understand someone in real life, we naturally put ourselves into their shoes. We look at their surroundings, the information they are gleaning from their environment, and the actions they are carrying out.
The same happens with game characters. A guard standing in a dark room hears a noise: “I’d flick the light switch,” we think. If the guard doesn’t do that, we might assume they are stupid.
If we only catch a glimpse of someone for a short while, we don’t have enough time to understand their situation. If we see a guard who has heard a noise suddenly turn away and move slowly in the opposite direction, we assume the AI is faulty. The guard should have moved across the room toward the noise.

CHANGES OF BEHAVIOR: The perception window isn’t only about time. Think about the ghosts in Pac-Man again. They might not give the impression of sentience, but they don’t do anything out of place. This is because they rarely change behavior (the most noticeable is their transformation when the player eats a power-up). Whenever a character r in a game changes behavior, the change is far more conspicuous than the behavior itself. In the same way, when a character’s behavior should obviously change and doesn’t, it draws attention. If two guards are standing talking to each other and you shoot one down, the other guard shouldn’t carry on the conversation!

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2.2 AI Model

MODEL OF GAME AI :

It splits the AI task into three sections: movement, decision making, and strategy. The first two sections contain algorithms that work on a character by-character basis, and the last section operates on a team or side.
Around these three AI elements is a whole set of additional infrastructure. Not all game applications require all levels of AI. Board games like Chess or Risk require only the strategy level;
The characters in the game (if they can even be called that) don’t make their own decisions and don’t need to worry about how to move On the other hand, there is no strategy at all in many games.
Non-player characters in a platform game, such as Hollow Knight, or Super Mario Bros are purely reactive, making their own simple decisions and acting on them. There is no coordination that makes sure the enemy characters do the best job of thwarting the player.

MOVEMENT:

Movement refers to algorithms that turn decisions into some kind of motion. When an enemy character without a projectile attack needs to attack the player in Super Mario Sunshine, it first heads directly for the player.
When it is close enough, it can actually do the attacking. The decision to attack is carried out by a set of movement algorithms that home in on the player’s location. Only then can the attack animation be played and the player’s health be depleted.

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2.2 AI Model

DECISION MAKING:

Decision making involves a character working out what to do next. Typically, each character has a range of different behaviors that they could choose to perform: attacking, standing still, hiding, exploring, patrolling, and so on.
The decision making system needs to work out which of these behaviors is the most appropriate at each moment of the game.
The chosen behavior can then be executed using movement AI and animation technology.

AGENT-BASED AI:

Agent-based AI is about producing autonomous characters that take in information from the game data, determine what actions to take based on the information, and carry out those actions.
It can be seen as bottom-up design: you start by working out how each character will behave and by implementing the AI needed to support that. The overall behavior of the whole game is simply a function of how the individual character behaviors work together.
The first two elements of the AI model I use, movement and decision making, make up the AI for an agent in the game.
In contrast, a non-agent-based AI seeks to work out how everything ought to act from the top down and builds a single system to simulate everything. An example is the traffic and pedestrian simulation in the cities of Grand Theft Auto 3.
The overall traffic and pedestrian flows are calculated based on the time of day and city region and are only turned into individual cars and people when the player can see them.
A good AI developer will mix and match any reliable techniques that get the job done, regardless of the approach.

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10. Assignment Question

Assignment	Design the following	K - Level	COs
1	Structure of Games and major genres	K4	CO1
2	Game concepts, game worlds, working with formal elements	K5	CO1
3	Storytelling and Game play	K4	CO1
4	Principles of Level Design and Conceptualization	K6	CO1
5	Prototyping and Play testing	K6	CO1

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11. Part A�Question & Answer�

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11. Part A Question & Answer

1. What is a Game?(CO1, K1)

GAMES are a type of play activity, conducted in the context of a pretended reality, in which the participant(s) try to achieve at least one arbitrary, nontrivial goal by acting in accordance with rules.
Games arise from the human desire for play and from our capacity to pretend. Play is a wide category of nonessential, and usually recreational, human activities that are often socially significant as well. Pretending is the mental ability to establish an imaginary reality that the pretender knows is different from the real world and that the pretender can create, abandon, or change at will. Playing and pretending are essential elements of playing games. Both have been studied extensively as cultural and psychological phenomena.

2. Define Game Design? (CO1, K2)

Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems and rules of a game. Games can be created for entertainment, education, exercise or experimental purposes. Additionally, elements and principles of game design can be applied to other interactions, in the form of gamification.

3. What is the structure of game design? (CO1, K3)

The Structure of Game Design is designed to help aspiring and existing game designers turn their ideas into working games. Creating a game involves understanding the core foundational elements of all types of games from paper-based games to the latest video games.

4. What are the process involved in game design ? (CO1, K3)

Game design is the process of

Imagining a game
Defining the way it works
Describing the elements that make up the game (conceptual, functional, artistic, and others)
Transmitting information about the game to the team who will build it
Refining and tuning the game during development and testing.

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11. Part A Question & Answer

5. What is PLAYER-CENTRIC GAME DESIGN? (CO1, K1)

PLAYER-CENTRIC GAME DESIGN is a philosophy of design in which the designer envisions a representative player of a game the designer wants to create. The designer then undertakes two key obligations to that player.

6.Draw the relationship among the core mechanics, the user interface, and the player? (CO1, K2)

7. What is GAMEPLAY MODES? (CO1, K1)

GAMEPLAY MODES consist of the particular subset of a game’s total gameplay that is available at any one time in the game, plus the user interface that presents that subset of the gameplay to the player.

8. What are called shell screens ? (CO1, K2)

A pause menu in a game is also a shell menu unless it lets the player take some action that affects the game world (such as making strategic adjustments in a sports game), in which case it is a gameplay mode. Non-interactive sequences such as title screens or credits screens are called shell screens.

9. What are the three stages of the design process ? (CO1, K3)

The concept stage, which you perform first and whose results do not change.
The elaboration stage, in which you add most of the design details and refine your decisions through prototyping and play testing.
The tuning stage, at which point no new features may be added, but you can make small adjustments to polish the game.

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11. Part A Question & Answer

10. Define Prototyping? (CO1, K2)

A prototype is a simplified, but testable, version of your game. Designers make prototypes to try out game features before they spend the time and money to implement them in the actual game; they also use them for play-testing with their audience to see if the game is enjoyable

11.How to define a game world ? (CO1, K2)

The game world is where your game takes place, and defining it can be an enormous task. If the game world is based on the real world (as in a flight simulator, for example), then you can use photographs and maps of real places in order to create its appearance.

13. What are Designing Levels? (CO1, K1)

Level design is the process of constructing the experience that the game offers directly to the player, using the components provided by the game design: the characters, challenges, actions, game world, core mechanics, and storyline if there is one. These components don’t have to be completely finished for level design to begin, but enough must be in place for a level designer to have something to work with.

14. What Is a Genre? ( CO1, K1)

The primary goal of this technology is to provide directions to users onscreen, overlaid on top of real environments seen through the camera of a device like a smartphone or headset.

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12. Part B Questions

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12.PART – B Questions

Explain in detail on Structure of Games. (CO1,K2)
Explain in detail on major genres. (CO1,K3)
Write a short note on game concepts, game worlds. (CO1,K2)
Explain on storytelling, game play in detail. (CO1,K3)
Explain on game balancing in detail. (CO1,K3)
What is principles of Level Design? Explain in Detail. (CO1,K2)
Explain in detail on Conceptualization. (CO1,K3)
Explain in detail on Prototyping, Play testing. (CO1,K3)

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13. Supportive online courses

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14. Real Time Applications

GameMaker Studio 2 — no-code 2D & 3D game design tool

GameMaker Studio 2 is another popular no-code game design software that is well-suited for novice game designers, indie developers, and professionals alike. It's excellent as an entry-level game design software, but experienced game designers can also appreciate its capacity for rapid game prototyping.

GameMaker is one of the leading solutions for making 2D games, and a pretty good one for 3D games as well. It provides a full-stack approach to game design, offering tools for programming, sound, logic, level design, and compilation.

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�15. Content Beyond Syllabus (CO1, K6)��

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16. Assessment Schedule

Tentative schedule for the Assessment During 2024-2025 Odd semester

S. No.	Name of the Assessment	Start Date	End Date	Portion
1	Unit Test 1			Unit 1
2	IAT 1			Unit 1 & 2
3	Unit Test 2			Unit 3
4	IAT 2			Unit 3 & 4
5	Revision 1			Unit 5, 1 & 2
6	Revision 2			Unit 3 & 4
7	Model			All 5 Units

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17. Text Books & References

TEXT BOOKS: Ernest Adams, “Fundamentals of Game Design”, 3rd Edition, Pearson Education, 2015. Ian Millington, “AI for Games”, CRC Press, 3 rd edition, 2019. Jung Hyun Han, “3D Graphics for Game Programming”, Delmar Cengage Learning, 2011.
REFERENCES: Tracy Fullerton: Game Design Workshop, A Play centric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 4 th Edition, CRC Press, 2018. Jason Gregory, “Game Engine Architecture”, CRC Press, Third Edition, 2018. Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, “Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design”, New Riders Press, 2012. Jesse Schell, “The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses”, Third Edition, CRC Press, 2019. https://godotengine.org/ https://www.pygame.org https://www.blender.org/

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18. Mini Project Suggestions

Install Blender and learn basic 3D graphics including rendering pipeline, textures, coordinate systems, lighting, simple animation (CO1, K6)
Implement path finding algorithm and incorporate the same in the 2D game. (CO1, K6)
Implement simple board game. (CO1, K6)
Experiment with creating and importing simple 2D / 3D characters, into the work environment. (CO1, K6)
Create and implement simple animation using blender/equivalent tools. (CO1, K6)
Design and document a simple 2D game, following the principles of game design, including genre, characters, game world, characters, game mechanics, levels. (CO1, K6)

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Thank you