The Essentials

  • WhoOoi Wei Tsang (ooiwt)
  • Where: COM1/213
  • When: Mon 1200-1400
  • Workload: Lecture (2hr) Preparation (2hr) Homework (6hr) per week
  • CA: Open Book Exam (35%) Assignments (35%) Project (30%)
  • Objective: This module aims at providing students with a deep understanding of various technical issues pertaining to the development of networked games and mobile games. Students will be exposed to concepts from distributed system, operating systems, security and cryptography, networking and embedded systems. In particular, issues such as game server architectures (mirrored, centralized, peer-to-peer etc.), consistency management (bucket synchronization, dead reckoning etc.), interest management, scalability to large number of clients, cheat prevention and detection, and power management will be discussed.

Schedule (Tentative, updated 12 January 2015)

  1. Week 1 (12 January): Introduction + Assignment 1 Released + Project Released
  2. Week 2 (19 January): Lag
  3. Week 3 (26 January): Prediction + Project Proposal Due
  4. Week 4 (02 February): LPF + Bucket Synchronization + Assignment 2 Released
  5. Week 5 (09 February): Multiplayer Game Design
  6. Week 6 (16 February): Interest Management I
  7. Midterm Break (23 February): No Class
  8. Week 7 (2 March):  Interest Management II + Assignment 2 Due + Project Checkpoint 1
  9. Week 8 (9 March): Hybrid Architecture (eLearning Week)
  10. Week 9 (16 March): Game Traffic + Transport Protocol for Games
  11. Week 10 (23 March): Server Discovery and Matchmaking + Project Checkpoint 2
  12. Week 11 (30 March): Guest Lecture + Power-Aware Gaming
  13. Week 12 (6 April):  Cloud Gaming + Assignment 3 Due
  14. Week 13 (13 April):  Project Presentation
  15. Exam (29 April)

Reference Books

  • Networking and Online Games: Understanding and Engineering Multiplayer Internet Games
    Grenville Armitage, Mark Claypool, Philip Branch
    ISBN: 978-0-470-01857-6, Hardcover, 232 pages, June 2006
    [NUS LINC]
  • Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games
    Jouni Smed, Harri Hakonen
    ISBN: 978-0-470-01812-5, Hardcover, 286 pages, July 2006
    [NUS LINC]

Related Courses (Elsewhere)

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