COSC 3550
Programming Computer Games
Spring, 2020


Course Description:
This course will explore the algorithms, data structures, and tricks used to program computer video games. We will be programming in Java using the JavaFX media library and focussing on arcade-style video games (new and "classic") rather than text-based adventures or strategy games such as chess.

Course Syllabus

Final Exam Study Guide

Exam 2 Study Guide

Exam 1 Study Guide

Homework Assignments

Class Demos
This is a link to a directory of class demos. They are not intended to be self-explanatory (although they might sometimes be), but rather are created as visual aids to the lectures. I'm making them available here so you can play with them and study the examples further after class. In other words, I can't imagine how you would take intelligent notes on some of this stuff, so here are my "animated notes".

Neat Sites
This page contains links to various interesting web sites related to Computer Game programming.


Removing spurious JavaFX error messages in Eclipse
As I showed in class, loading a JavaFX program into Eclipse often produces a huge number of "errors". They aren't really errors, but Eclipse gets upset about the way the JavaFX packages are arranged (or some such thing). To fix this, in Eclipse, click on the "Window" menu and choose "Preferences". In the Preferences window, click on "Java" on the left, then "Compiler" under the Java heading, and then "Errors/Warnings" under Compilers.
Now, on the right-hand side of the Preferences window, scroll down to open "Deprecated and restricted API" and change the "Forbidden reference (access rules)" setting from "Error" to "Ignore". Click on "OK" and agree to the full rebuild suggested by the pop-up window. This should remove all the error messages (you might need to close and restart Eclipse, but usually not).

Java 8 API

JavaFX 8 API


This site created and maintained by Dr. Michael C. Slattery of Marquette University.
You can contact me at mikes (a) mscs.mu.edu.