Computer Science CS C95 (22)
Computer Game Design
Spring 2001
Course Information:
Location: CS Classroom 381 (CS Department, 1890 Maple Avenue)
Time: Tuesday and Thursday 1:00-2:20pm |
Instructor:
Ken Forbus
Computer Science Department
1890 Maple Avenue, Room 300
forbus@northwestern.edu
(847) 491-7699
Office hours: By appointmentTeaching Assistant:
Robin Hunicke
Computer Science Department
1890 Maple Avenue
hunicke@cs.northwestern.edu
(847) 467-7252
Office hours: TBD |
Check the class newsgroup for
announcements, help, and discussions.
Course materials
Communications:
- To submit homework assignments, please use the mailing list c95-gd-staff@cs.northwestern.edu.
- The class-wide mailing list is c95-gd@cs.nwu.edu.
If you are enrolled in the class, you can join it by sending email to
majordomo@cs.northwestern.edu.
If you haven't used majordomo before, include the single word
"help" in the text of your message to get a list of commands.
- Please remember to check this web site often for updates, and use the reload command on
your browser to ensure that you are receiving the most up-to-date information.
- Important note: Learning design skills is often best done in a group
setting, where problems that arise during the design process are discussed in a studio
setting. Part of class time will be devoted to discussing design
problems that you are finding in doing homework assignments, so please bring partial
solutions and ideas to discuss to class. It will save time if you bring
in your code on a floppy disk, zip disk, or CD rather than relying on network connections, so we can look
at it together on-screen.
General Resources
Interactive Fiction resources:
- The Frotz interpreter we are using can be found here.
-
The Inform compiler we are using can be found here. Please
look carefully at the tutorials on this page; they will be helpful. There are also links to
many other interactive fiction resources from this page.
- The Inform Designer's manual is
required reading to use it effectively, and contains a wealth of insights
into the design of interactive fiction that should be read by anyone who
wants to write interactive fiction. The Acrobat version of the 4th
edition is locally mirrored here.
While we strongly recommend using the 4th edition, for historical purposes
an on-line hypertext of the 3rd edition starts here.
- Studying the source code for sample
Inform games
written in it is highly recommended. Probably the simplest way to run Inform is from
a shell under gnuemacs.
There is even an inform-mode for gnuemacs, if you scout around for it.
- The Twonky Island story
bible, source code, and .Z5
file are on-line.
Age of Kings resources:
The Sims resources:
- You will need the Transmogifier
in addition to Edith, to change the appearance and catalog entries for your
objects.
- The current version of the Joy Booth can be downloaded from here.
- Some documentation on the Edith virtual machine and programming
environment for The Sims can be found in this
document.
- The best objects for The Sims developed by last year's class can be
downloaded from here.
- Some neat videos, including more on pie menus, Edith, and other goodies,
are here.
Acknowledgements: This course relies on resources generously
provided by others. It would not be possible without them.
- We thank Graham Nelson for creating the Inform compiler and the excellent
documentation associated with it.
- We thank Microsoft for donating copies of Age of Kings for the CS lab and
to the students in the course.
- We thank Will Wright for providing the Edith editor for The
Sims.
Last edited 5/16/02 by KDF.
Please send suggestions to c95-gd-staff@cs.nwu.edu.
Return to: CS Courses | CS Home Page