IMGD 1001 Practice Final Exam

The below questions are designed to provide practice for the final exam. They are not necessarily complete, as carefully vetted as the exam questions may be, nor carefully timed. Still, it should provide the "flavor" for the exam questions. Use them as an aid in studying, in addition to reading, memorizing, self-quizzing, preparing a one-pager, etc.

  1. What is a reference as it relates to visual design and production for games?
  2. What do we refer to when we talk about using "broad strokes" for artistic rendering? Provide an example.
  3. What are some of the differences between NURBS and Polygonal modeling?
  4. What are faces, normals and backface culling as they related to polygonal modeling?
  5. Briefly describe some ways to effectively reduce the polygon count, with examples where appropriate. Why might you want to do this?
  6. What is box modeling?
  7. What is a texture and how does it relate to a shader?
  8. What is an alpha channel?
  9. Provide some brief examples of how lighting can be used to influence mood.
  10. What is a key light? What is a fill light? What kind of light would you use to make "pools of light" in a scene?
  11. What is a sound designer as a member of a game development team?
  12. What is the sampling rate when applied to capturing audio? Why not always sample at the highest rate possible by the hardware?
  13. What is the typical sample size and sample rate for voice?
  14. Describe one technique MP3 compression uses to compress audio data.
  15. Why might ambient background music be a mistake?
  16. Name one good tip for using music in a game.
  17. Name 2 out of the 3 programming areas talked about in class.
  18. What is the code and fix method of software engineering?
  19. What is version control software? Why is it useful?
  20. Name one advantage of C++ over Java. Name one advantage of Java over C++.
  21. Name the steps in the process of debugging, as discussed in class.
  22. What is the goal of AI in a computer game opponent?

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