An experience report and analysis of Java technologies in undergraduate game programming courses
2009; Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1937-4771
AutoresPaul Gestwicki, Andrew W. Haddad, Austin L. Toombs, Fu-Shing Sun,
Tópico(s)Model-Driven Software Engineering Techniques
ResumoWe report on our experience in the design, execution, and evaluation of an undergraduate game programming course that used Java-based technologies. The formal learning objectives for the course are presented, and we provide a justification for the use of Slick, an open source, Java-based library for writing 2D games. Slick was used in conjunction with Eclipse, Subversion, and Java WebStart. Slick has a modular design that provides a layer of abstraction above the LightWeight Java Gaming Library (LWJGL), using native libraries to delegate to OpenGL, OpenAL, JInput, and the Java API for graphics, audio, and input processing. Our experience showed that Slick provided an appropriate level of abstraction for a course that balanced academic rigor against the demands of production. We also report on a subset of these students who developed a 3D game using JMonkeyEngine after having learned 2D game programming in Slick, and compare their experiences using these two different interface paradigms and software libraries. We conclude with recommendations for future educational research that explores how 2D and 3D game programming meet course and program objectives.
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