CSE3AGT – How to fail the Exam

Paul Taylor 2010

Things to forget:

• What is Barry? A hamster or a Guinea Pig?• The differences between Dx9 and Dx10• What is a shader?• What can Textures be used for?• 3D Textures?• Is collision detection important in a video

game?

Things to forget:

• How easy is lighting to perform?• What are BSP Trees good for?– What are they bad for?

• The Vertex Pipeline– World, View and Projection Matrices• What do each do? • What order?

– What is back-face culling?

Things to forget:

• Pixel Shaders– Where do they output to?– Is OpenGL4 similar to Dx10 / Dx11?

• Light Maps– What are they?– Why?

• Input– What is the difference between Xinput and

DirectInput?

Things to forget:

• What new features are in Dx11 when compared to Dx10?

• What is the difference between a Normal Map and a Bump map?– Which needs more pre-processing / more post-

processing?• What does a Geometry shader do?• Are there any difficulties when developing a

cross-platform game engine?

Things to forget:

• What is the architecture of REYES (Renderman)?– How is it similar to developments in game

engines?• What are vertex layouts?– Do they need to match shader formats?

• What does a swizzle do?

Things to forget:

• What is the standard pipeline from a RAW set of vertices through to a bunch of pixels on the display? (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee415715%28VS.85%29.aspx)

• How do you translate, rotate and scale objects in 3D space?– Is the order important?

• Could you highlight the required relationships between a vertex layout and a VS + PS shader?

Things to forget:

• Particle Systems– How do they work?– What types are there?• What are they good for?

– What are force fields?• How do they help particle systems?

– How could you create a really efficient particle system utilising the GPU?

Things to forget:

• Fog!– What is it used for?– What benefits does fog give the game engine?– How does fog work?

• Multi-Texturing– What can different texture layers be used for?

• Do they need to be visible?

• Texture animation– How, why?

• UV Wrapping and offsets

Things to forget:

• Zones, Portals and Anti-portals– What are they?– How do they improve your game engine?

Things to forget:

(hardcore)• Ray Tracing– Can it be done efficiently?– How would you optimise it?

• 3D Texture uses– What could you do with a 3D texture?

The End!

• Thanks for doing• AGT in 2010!• -Paul