CS 272 - Three-Dimensional Game Development II DirectX

5.0 Credits
Second of a three-course sequence covering 3D game programming using the latest version of the Microsoft 3D API. Topics include camera management systems, texture compression, advanced texturing and alpha blending, loading GILES levels, and advanced 3D rendering techniques (was CMPSC 272). Prerequisite: CS 271 (was CMPSC 271) with a grade of at least 2.5 or departmental permission.

Course Objectives
Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Recognize and describe several special effects such as particle systems, billboards, texture animation, corona, constrained billboards, and animated textures, and be able to describe situations in which these special effects can best be implemented. [REASON]
Write code which will implement a particle system that produces a realistic smoke trail. [REASON]
Design and implement an octree spatial portioning algorithm and integrate it into a general collision detection system. [REASON]
Write a program which will allow a user to move a sphere through a game world with realistic collision behavior. [REASON]
Write code that implements an animated skeleton and mesh skin. [REASON]
Describe how fog is represented in a 3D game, and be able to write D3D code to add fog to a game scene. [COMMUNICATE]
Describe how transparency is modeled in a 3D rendering engine, and how alpha blending, depth ordering, and texture color keying are related to transparency models. [COMMUNICATE]
Describe collision detection algorithms for common geometric forms, and how to integrate such algorithms into a general game engine. [COMMUNICATE]
Clearly communicate problem and solution descriptions to instructor and peers, and work with peers to jointly solve game programming problems. [COMMUNICATE]