Computer Simulations and Interactive Media

Computer Simulations and Interactive Media is a course on design and prototyping. This course will introduce students to the concepts of web app development, game design, and artificial intelligence through basic programming and mathematics. The course will provide a general overview of simulations, interactivity, and prototyping, with emphasis on culture, history, real world practices, and applications. Students will journal their explorations, develop and build a final team project, and present their projects via live demo. After the course, each student will have their own online design and programming portfolio.

Instructor: Sherol Chen

E-Mail: sherolchen@gmail.com
Course Website: spcs.sherolchen.com
Meeting Time: 9 am - 11:30 am MTWRF
Class Room: 200-205 Main Quad

Teaching Assistants

Peter Farejowicz
- Wordpress: http://pfarejowicz.wordpress.com/
- Github: https://github.com/PFarejowicz
Julie Ni
- Wordpress: http://nijulie.wordpress.com/
- Github: https://github.com/njulie

Assignments/Projects

Math Quiz
Computer History IF
Lock IF
Seurat
Visual Sort
Bouncing Balls - Particles and Gravity
Traveling Sales Mousey
A* is for Alan
Game AI - Tic Tac Toe, Black Jack, or Rock Paper Scissors
Cellular Automata
Arduino
Final Project

Texts and Materials

Course Topics

Topics and Schedule are subject to change

Weekend
	Lecture	Assignment	Reading
Tue	Introduction and Setup	Wordpress and Github signup, JS Math Quiz	Cookbook ch 1
Wed	History and Foundations of Computing	JS Interactive Fiction	Cookbook ch 2
Thr	Algorithms and Data Structures	Twine IF, Processing, JS Mole Game	Cookbook ch 3
Fri	Guest Speaker, Finite State Machines	Field Trip: Tech Museum
Mon	AI, Searching, Sorting, Animations	Processing Sort, JS Tile Game	Turing Paper, Cookbook ch 4
Tue	Graphs, Search	Processing TSP, JS Platformer	Design Book, Cookbook ch 5
Wed	Field Trip: Exploratorium	Field Trip: Exploratorium
Thr	OOP and A*	Processing A*, JS Fighter	Gates Letter, Cookbook ch 6
Fri	Logic and Arduino, Guest Speaker	Arduino
Weekend
Mon	Game Theory and Game Studies	Processing Tic Tac Toe, JS Shooter	Cookbook ch 7
Tue	Cellular Automata	Processing CA, JS FPS	Cookbook ch 8
Wed	Field Trip: Computer History Museum	Final Project, JS RPG	Cookbook ch 9
Thr	Final Projects, Guest Speaker	Guest Speaker, Final Projects
Fri	Final Project Presentations	Final Project Presentations

Assignments

Week 1

Day 1 - Prime Numbers, Permutations, Combinations, Internet, Networks, Github, Wordpress, Command-Line Arguments, Domain Name, DNS, Hosting, Sieve of Eratosthenes, Top Level Domain, Client Side, Server Side
Day 2 - History, Bit Manipulation, Base Conversion, Parameters, Functions, Assembler, Microprocessor, Microcontroller, IDE, Variables, For-Loop, Game-Loop/Draw-Loop, Machine Language, Boolean, Hexadecimal, Octal, Logic Error, Syntax Error, Canvas, Datatypes
Day 3 - Type Errors, Data Structures, Arrays, Stacks, Linked Lists, Queues, Binary Trees, Graphs, Bit Manipulation, Operator, Operand, Bit Shifting, Dynamic Typed Language, Operator Overloading
Day 4 - Guest Speaker, Finite State Machines

Week 2

Day 5 - Turing Test, Dartmouth Conference, AI, Loebner, Cleverbot, Eliza Effect, Imitation Game, Selection, Insertion, Bubble, Binary Search, Binary Search Tree, Processing.js, Big-O, Animations, Divide and Conquer
Day 6 - Prototypes, Traveling Sales Person, Adjacency Matrix, Dijkstra's Algorithm, Depth First Search, Breadth First Search, Greedy Algorithm, Brute Force Algorithm, NP Complete, Polynomial Time, Non-Polynomial Time, Directed/Undirected Graph, Weighted/Unweighted Graph
Day 7 - Field Trip
Day 8 - OOP, Abstraction, Polymorphism, Inheritance, Encapsulation, Greedy Best-First Search, A*, Flood Filling, Internships, Methods, Classes, Objects, Heuristics, Tree Search, Prototypes
Day 9 - Circuits, kD Trees, Arduino, Ohm's Law, Logic Gates, Guest Speaker

Week 3

Day 10 - Game Design, Game Theory, Game Studies, Game Trees, Alternate Reality Game, Hash Tables, Hash Functions, Ludus Paida Narrative, Ludology Narratology Debate, Game AI, Decision Trees, Concept Net, Implication, Demorgans Law, Double Implication (iff)
Day 11 - Cellular Automata, Networks, Servers, Information Conformity, Probabilities, Asch Experiment, Game Developers, Game Developers Conference
Day 12 - Field Trip
Day 13 - Guest Speaker
Day 14 - Final Projects

Daily

Research Journals

In general, make your links clickable! Put at least 1 photo on every page/post. PAGES and POSTS are NOT THE SAME!

Teaching

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