Interactive Media & Game Development Worcester Polytechnic Institute	IMGD

Course Objectives:

By the end of the course, you should feel comfortable assembling low-level components (and disassembling larger ones) to create novel interface devices. You should also know how to make them communicate with applicaton software, and how the design of interactive applications, such as games, is influenced by the selected devices.

Beyond games, the knowledge gained from this course will allow designers of teleoperated robotics systems, as well as traditional user interface designers, to better understand the possibilities of incorporating simple sensor and actuator systems into their designs.

This is a perfect time to study these topics, because of several current developments:

• sensors and actuators are becoming cheap and plentiful
• computer systems, including mobile platforms, are becoming smaller, cheaper, and more powerful
• networking infrastructures at many levels (e.g., Ethernet, cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth) are now widely available
• the Nintendo Wii, SmartPhones (e.g., the iPhone & Android), eReaders (e.g., iPad & Kindle), all "game changing" technologies, have been embraced by large segments of the population who have not traditionally been served by their respective communities
• the use, availability, and acceptance of robotic systems is steadily increasing
• people love gadgets more than they ever have in the past!

There are several objectives for this course:

• Understand the strengths and limitations of the different human sensory systems (e.g., sight & sound)
• Understand how device characteristics influence system design
• Learn how to program an embedded processor to gather input from, and deliver output to, a user
• Learn just enough about electrical engineering to construct simple circuits for input and output
• Explore emerging mobile platforms (e.g., Android)
• Do some cool stuff!

There are many other things that must come together to make a successful game. Thankfully, you have four years, and a whole array of courses, within which to accumulate skills and experience in many of these. We hope you will apply what you learn here when doing projects for other courses, and for your MQP.

Grading:

Presupposed background:

Projects:

Most of the projects will use the Arduino platform, which will allow you to quickly (and relatively painlessly) set up a framework for building physical Input/Output devices. The Arduino has a very active community of, er, hardware hackers who not only build interesting I/O devices with the Arduino, but also provide good support for others wanting to do the same. If you want to get the most out of this course, you will embrace and contribute to this community.

Also, we have several Android mobile phones, Motortola Droids generously donated by Google, that you will use for some of the projects. As with the Arduino, there is a very active development community for the Android, with free eclipse-based development tools. Also, unlike developing for the iPod/iPhone/iPad, installing apps on Android is as simple as copying the app to the device.

Discussion Boards:

Late Policy:

Attendance:

Office Hours:

General:

The IMGD lab (FL-222) can be used for this course, and the Arduino boards you will use can be connected to the lab computers for you to do your projects there. Android development can also be done on the lab machines. You are also free to work on your own computer.

Class Conduct:

Individual projects are expected to be done individually. As such, students are encouraged to discuss their work with each other, but are also expected to do the work by themselves.

Any breach of professional ethics as evidenced, for example, by copying exams or projects, downloading code from the Internet, cooperating in more than discussions and study groups, misusing computer resources, or using outside help of any kind, will be considered adequate reason for an NR in the course.

Group projects are designed so that every person gains a significant amount of new material. In the workplace, each team member is expected to contribute. Participants in group projects in this course should keep this in mind, and act accordingly. In evaluating each group, all team members will be asked to distribute a fixed set of "points" to the rest of their team, based on how much each member contributed.

It is to be emphasized that knowledge of material and professional behavior are tied together; failure in one of them negates any excellence in the other. Students who stay in the course past the first three days agree to adhere to the strictest rules of professional behavior.

The official WPI statements on Academic Integrity can be accessed at http://www.wpi.edu/offices/policies/honesty.html. Those who have any doubt about what that means, and fail to gain that understanding after a discussion with the instructor, are encouraged to drop this class. Remember this warning - any breach of ethics will earn you an NR.

Course Schedule:

Schedule for Office Hours:

Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
9:00
:30
10:00
:30
11:00
:30
12:00
:30
1:00		IMGD 3xxx FL-222			IMGD 3xxx FL-222
:30
2:00
:30
3:00				TA Office Hours FL-222
:30
4:00
:30
5:00		TA Office Hours FL-222
:30
6:00
:30
7:00
:30
8:00
:30

Main Web Resources

• Arduino Home Page
• Android Home Page
• Arduino Dev Kit
• Safari Books Online (Enter "Arduino" in the search box).
• Cool Arduino Projects
• Good Arduino Tutorials
• Resistor Color Coding Chart
• Arduino + Wii MotionPlus
• sparkfun
• Digi-Key
• Jameco
• All Electronics
• A Pragmatic Introduction to the Art of Electrical Engineering, Paul H. Dietz, 1998 (Local Copy)
• Unity Game Engine
• C4 Game Engine
• Ultimarc: Arcade Controller Parts
• U-HID: Universay-Human Interface Device Page
• "Controller Mediation in Human-Computer Play" (Master's Thesis), Tony Tulathimutte (2005), Stanford University