Summary
In
developing Software
Engineering and Computer Games and its accompanying
software framework I had four broad goals.
· To teach
a lively style of object‑oriented software engineering.
· To show how
to bring a complete program to the level of a commercial release.
· To
provide a “game engine” framework of
linked classes for game development.
· To
create programs that are interactive, rapidly executing, and visually
beautiful.
Software
Engineering and Computer Games
was originally developed for use as the primary textbook in
undergraduate Software Engineering and graduate Software Projects
courses in the Department of Computer Science at San Jose State
University (SJSU for short).
In these classes we cover the topics of Software Engineering
in the context of having student teams design and implement computer
games. Depending on the nature of the course, lesser
or greater emphasis can be placed on the student projects.
The
book is also meant to be suitable for self-study.
Readers are encouraged to use the book to create their
own games. Software Engineering and Computer Games is specifically designed so as to allow
would-be game developers to get their own games running easily
and rapidly.
In
order to make it feasible for readers of this book to carry out
a game project without getting lost in endless details, I’ve created
an open source C++ software framework for developing computer
games; this is the “Pop Framework,” with source code available
for free download from this website.
As
well as working as a software engineering text or as a self-study
guide for budding game-developers, Software Engineering and
Computer Games can also serve as the text for a course on
computer games such as the Computer Game Design and Programming
such as the one we have at SJSU. The idea of having university Computer Science
departments teach computer game programming is a fairly new idea. Software Engineering and Computer Games
should serve to show that a course of this nature can be taught
in a sound and academically respectable fashion.
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