The document summarizes an ACM Game Development interest group that meets on Wednesdays at 7 PM. It discusses why game development is enjoyable and how both coding and non-coding roles are available. It focuses on using the Neverwinter Nights toolset for high-level game development as it provides an established framework. Past projects created puzzles in NWN. Members of all experience levels are welcome and pizza will be provided at the first meeting on September 10th.

1. ACM Game
Development
WEDNESDAY AT 7 PM IN LAFFERRE 1004
ELIOT PROKOP – EBP25C@MAIL.MISSOURI.EDU

2. Why Game Development?
• It’s fun!
• As amazing as finding the area of a triangle is, it’s enjoyable to create
something more immediately usable
• I know you’ve sat there and thought “Wow, this is stupid, I could do better
than this” while playing a game – here’s your chance!
•It also makes you think of coding in different ways
• What happens when you’re working within an already existing framework
that responds dynamically?

3. Involve Your Friends!
• You don’t need any prior knowledge to participate in the interest group
• We’ll teach you from the ground up for a specific game’s toolset that’s very easy
to learn the basics of or try to help you with the toolset of your choice
• There’s also a lot involved that isn’t coding specific – everything from story
design to environment design to combat design to item design
• Much of that is determined by coding but you need to figure out WHAT to code
in the first place!
• Which means you can involve your friends who aren’t CS majors. Design
something cross-disciplinary as a group!

4. High Level Programming
• No, we’re not talking about video game levels!
• High level means working with an engine and code that’s already established –
which means you as the coder are mainly worried about things like how the
environment looks, how creatures react to things, how the plot works, etc
• It means you can focus coding on the stuff specific to your vision of what you
want to make rather than trying to get a game that will even launch and where a
player can move around
• High level often includes Object Oriented Programming – if you don’t know
what that is, come find out! Used extensively in languages like C++ and Java

5. Low Level Programming
• Low level means the basic building blocks like how a player even moves or how
graphics are rendered on the screen
• It’s more or less creating the game from scratch
• The benefit is that you can fully customize every aspect of the game and you
know how the engine works perfectly (and can adjust it)
• The bad news is it will take a ton of work to get to the point where you have
something playable at all, let alone something that’s fun and engaging
• If you want to go that route you’ll probably want to do something simpler like
an Android/iPhone game

6. High Level -- NWN
• Neverwinter Nights is an amazing RPG with an incredible toolset – you have
access to every tool the original game designers did to make your own stuff
• I prefer many of the custom NWN modules I’ve played to games such as Mass
Effect and Dragon Age – there’s some absolutely amazing stuff out there
• Using the NWN toolset means you can jump right into creating your own
environments, creatures, items, characters, stories, etc, without needing to
worry about “How do I even make a game menu or animate things?”
• You still have the power to alter 98% of the game’s mechanics to suit your
needs – can make everything from a traditional RPG to an MMORPG to a Tower
Defense to a MOBA (think LoL/DotA) to even an RTS style game!

7. Simple To Learn, Difficult to Master
• Although the NWN toolset is easy to get the hang of initially, it has a ton of
depth once you figure out how to use the advanced features and how to code
• You can do anything from placing a creature in the world to developing a
database driven security security system that functions based on player CD-Key,
IP Address, and password
• We can find something suited for your programming skill, no matter what level
it’s at
• We can even find stuff to do for your friends who don’t program at all but
who want to be involved!

8. NWN Toolset

9. NWN Creature Options

10. NWN Script

11. Other High Level
• Have a different game/engine you already know you want to work on?
• That’s fine! We’ll try to help you out and you can try to recruit others for your
own project if several of you want to work with that game/engine
• Common ideas include Source Engine (Half Life series and other Valve games),
Starcraft 2, and Warcraft 3
• Just keep in mind some of them are far harder to work with initially, so make
sure you’re dedicated to wanting to learn that toolset

12. Low Level
• Want to try to create a game starting from the base code?
• Great!
• Just keep in mind you’ll need to do a lot of work before getting results
• We’ll try to help you and usually we have some people who are more familiar
with that type of thing
• As previously mentioned, something like an Android/iPhone game would
probably be best to start

13. Food for Thought Part 1
• Last year we made a color wheel puzzle in NWN
• The players had six initial shafts of light that were scrambled in color and they
had to be arranged into a proper color wheel
• Consider what this would require – you need to track six shafts of light, need to
be able to determine their color, need to be able to determine their relative
locations, need to be able to determine when they’ve been changed, etc
• One of the things we did was lock the yellow and red shafts of light into correct
positions and only the others could be changed – which meant there was only
one correct solution

14. Food for Thought Part 2 (Initial)

15. Food for Thought Part 3 (Solved)

16. Hope to See You On the 10th!
- Our first meeting will be September 10th in Lafferre 1004 (right next to
Ketchum) at 7 PM
- Usually end around 8:30 but can show up late or leave early if you need to!
- There will also be pizza available (Domino’s)– can get half of a pizza for $3 (I
buy the pizzas myself so just recouping my costs). Let me know if you want
specific toppings
- There’s also an email list which has an email or two sent out a week. Make
sure you’re on it if you want to be involved!
- My email is ebp25c@mail.missouri.edu
- Will try to integrate more information into Facebook or other site