Welcome to EWU Game Programming Introduction & Collaboration

Basics

Purpose

This site is intended to give an introduction to aspects of game programming, graphics (graphics design and rendering), and physics simulations (for game physics engines or for lone physics simulation), assist in setup of environments, provide examples of code, and provide a tool for collaboration on projects.  Most of the software is Open Source, with lenient licenses which largely allow you to use them as you like.

We also provide local mirrors of the versions of the software used in the tutorials as they are verified here, so as to provide a consistent experience when attempting to duplicate tutorials which have been reviewed here or created specifically for this site.

It is targeted at students in High School or beyond who would like to get their feet wet in the areas of Computer Science which may be of interest to them.  Others are welcome as well, if you have an interest in the area, want to learn or contribute something on one of the topics covered, want a place to collaborate on projects involving one or more of the areas covered here, or if you simply want a single portal to many such similar resources.

Related Sites

If this is not the site you were looking for, you may have been trying to reach the EWU CS general portal, rather than this one which is specific to games, graphics and rendering.  The general portal is located at:  http://csportal.cslabs.ewu.edu 

Navigating

At the top of this page, below the page logo, are the tabs for jumping to the sections of the site (if you reached this page through the games portal: http://games.cslabs.ewu.edu/, otherwise the navigation will appear to the left).  Go to one of these sections for content regarding that topic.  Along the left side will be a list of items in that section (folders, files, pages) which you can click to view.  Within the text of a page, there may be links to other items, these links come in two varieties: internal links (example: News) which link to pages within this site, and external links (example: Plone) which link to items on other websites.

Tools covered

The tools currently covered in this website are: Pygame, Pyglet, JavaFX, jMonkey Engine, Flash, GIMP, Blender, POV-Ray, PyODE, and Mekanimo.  You can navigate to the area covering a particular category from the tabs at the top of this page (or on the left navigation portlet if you did not get here from http://games.cslabs.ewu.edu/).  You can then pick the specific tool within that category from the navigation panel which will appear on the left.

We try to cover both Windows and Linux environments separately when the steps differ substantially, or together with notes on possible differences between the two platforms when the behavior is very similar.

Personalization, Collaboration, and Commenting

By creating an account and logging in here you will have access to:

• Customize some features of how it is viewed
• Add your own content to your personal folder and select other locations
• Comment on most sections
• Submit for publication (to enable viewing by others) content you've created in select locations and your own folder
• Upload your projects for comments or help by others
• Request additional tutorials or sections be added to the site
  

To create an account, click on "Register" which is located to the right of the navigation tabs near the top of this page, then follow the instructions there.

To log in to an account, click on "Log in" which is located just next to "Register".

Please CLICK HERE for more information on uploading items and creating pages yourself.

Additional Content and Participation

This site will continue to grow as more tutorials are reviewed and added, examples created and documented, news items on items of interest related to the area occur, and input is received.  This continually growing content will be added by the administrator, users who wish to contribute, or others enlisted to assist in adding content to this site

If you would like to contribute to this site, please e-mail the administrator.  Upon approval, you may add more tutorials, reviews and links of existing tutorials, examples, or even add an entire new section of similar topics.

If there is an area you would like covered more here, or a particular tutorial reviewed and clarified please either post a comment on that section, or e-mail the administrator.