Section 800: Monday/Wednesday 12:00-1:30PM  1690 CSE 

GAMING FOR THE GREATER GOOD - AN INTRODUCTION TO DEVELOPING COMPUTER SOFTWARE

David Chesney/Erik Hildinger 

Students in this course will learn 1-2 simple object-oriented (OO) programming languages. Using those programming languages, the students will develop a computer game that has some form of social relevance.

In the first half of the course, each student will learn fundamental programming skills, such as language syntax, sequential and concurrent execution, iterative and alternative commands, and event-driven execution. These lessons will be taught in the context of 1-2 OO languages.

In the second half of the course, each team of students will create a computer game using their newly acquired programming skills. The game, however, must have some form of social relevance. As examples, that game might teach a math or social studies lesson to K-12 students. Alternatively, a "Sim-Island" game has been proposed, where the eco-system of an island will be simulated in software.

For successful completion of this course, the student will

• design and document an algorithmic solution to a given problem statement
• build a software solution to meet or exceed the documented expectations
• test the software solution, and find and correct bugs introduced during the development cycle
• use the following statements to control program flow
• sequential
• concurrent
• alternative (if, if/else, switch)
• iteration (for, do, while)
• draw basic Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams to represent software system
• translate UML diagrams into working code.