Women in Game Programming, CS 181

This is the official course website for Women in Game Programming, CS 181, taught by Ira Fay at Hampshire College in Fall 2019.

Basic Info

The most important document for this class is the syllabus. It contains useful information, including the course schedule.

Class Sessions: Mondays and Wednesdays 10:30am - 11:50am, ASH 126
Professor: Ira Fay, (413) 559-6844, ASH 216, ifay@hampshire.edu
Office Hours: By appointment. A sign up sheet is available digitally.
Course Slack Channel: Hampshire Game Dev (sign up here, then click "Channels" on the left nav and choose #cs181, #cs181_help, and #cs181_handin.)
TA: Shan Jiang (website)
TA Office Hours: Fri: 10am - noon, ASH 126, and by appointment
And any time via the Slack channel #cs181_help.

Readings

Reading 1

Projects

Project details will be posted here when they are available.

Project 0 - Setup

Project 1 - Mining
Mining Project Submission Spreadsheet (find the tab with your name)
Mining Part 1a Walkthrough
Mining Part 1b and 2 Walkthrough
Mining Part 3 Walkthrough
Mining Part 4 Walkthrough
Mining Final Walkthrough

Project 2 - Transportation
Transportation Project Submission Spreadsheet (find the tab with your name)
Transportation Part 1 Walkthrough
Transportation Part 1b public static Explained and Static variables demo
Transportation Part 2 Walkthrough
Transportation Part 3 Walkthrough
UI Walkthrough (Newer versions of Unity have other ways of doing this)
Transportation Part 4 Walkthrough
Transportation Final Walkthrough

Final Project
Color Plus (Normal Difficulty)
Block Shift (Hard Difficulty)
Part 1 Slide Presentation
Final Project Submission Spreadsheet (find the tab with your name)
Color Plus Part 1 Walkthrough
Color Plus Grid and Next Cube Walkthrough
Color Plus Keyboard Input Walkthrough (also includes discussion of methods and debugging)
Lists vs. Arrays
Color Plus Finding White Cubes
Color Plus Mouse Input
Color Plus Detecting Plusses
Color Plus Show Score and End Game

Useful Links

Excellent Unity tutorials and scripting-specific tutorials
Unity answers (a forum for technical Unity questions)
Script reference
How to setup your own Hampshire website

Slides from this class:
01 Intro
02 Programming vs Math
03 Project 1
04 Mining Part 2

Bonus Info

Email Lists
If you want to know about Game Development at Hampshire and in the Five Colleges, join the Game Development email list. You may also want to join the Game Jobs or Game Jam email lists. Programmers might want to join the Computer Science list, and artists might want to join the Animation list. In fact, you might just want to browse all the lists at Hampshire and find lists that appeal to you.

Game Library
We are fortunate that the Hampshire library has an ever-growing collection of board games and digital games. Students, staff, and faculty members have access to this great resource. Please make use of it, and feel free to give feedback to Ira on your experience.

GlowLime Games
GlowLime Games is a mostly-defunct student group that focused on facilitating game development among students in the Five College area. If you are interested in starting it up again, please let me know!

Pioneer Valley Game Developers (PVGD)
The Pioneer Valley Game Developers (PVGD) meetup group is another great resource and community for game developers in the area.

The Quarters
The Quarters is an incredible arcade + restaurant. They have my full support, and their food is excellent and reasonably priced. If anyone beats my high score on Arkanoid, please let me know.

Game Gatherings
Ira regularly explores new board games, ideally playing them with students to increase all of our experience. If you're interested, contact him on Slack!

Game Stores
For some projects or just general fun, it may be useful for you to be aware of nearby boardgame stores.

Previous Survey Links

Transportation Feedback Survey

Mining Feedback Survey

Programming Skills Survey

Week 5 Survey

Enrollment Survey