Knowledge

The student...

understands how game engine works at a fundamental level, as well as the concept of a toolchain
is aware of different classes of game engines as well as the difference between rendering engines and complete game engines
understands how good tools are essential for efficient production of content
can explain the different categories of tools used in game production, including level editors, propertyeditor and support tools
can explain the most important functionality of a leveleditor
knows examples of commonly used third party solutions for game tools

Skills

The student...

can develop requirement specifications for a varied set of tools
can make programming game tools as desktop applications
masters use and handling of exceptions for improved stability
can implement essential features for a level editor
can use multithreading for offloading work to improve responsiveness in applications.
masters interfacing with existing APIs in other languages
masters serializing and deserializing data
masters unit testing code
can check out and compile a game engine
is able to perform minor improvements and bugfixing in a game engine

General competence

The student...

understands how a good toolchain can improve development efficiency
is able to critically reflect on the game development process and its required steps
can reason about the necessity of developing tools in-house as opposed to investing in third party solutions

Subject description PG5200

Tools Programming