Serious Game Development with Python, Django, and Makahiki

According to wikipedia, a “serious” game is one that is designed for a primary purpose other than entertainment.  This online course will cover selected concepts of serious game design in Python and Django including such game mechanics as points, scoreboards, badges, social and referral bonus mechanics through the guided exploration and enhancement of the serious game engine “Makahiki”.

This course will consist of online lectures, readings, and assignments.  Please see the Syllabus page for the preliminary sequence of topics. After a fast-paced introduction to Python and Django, students will engage in two projects:  an enhancement to the Makahiki serious game engine, and the development of a prototype serious game based upon each student’s own interests using components of Makahiki. (In the Syllabus, this prototype game development experience is referred to as “Microhiki”).

By the end of the course, students will have obtained a solid exposure to Python and Django development, game application design techniques, as well as other software engineering tools and technologies potentially including PyDev (a Python IDE based upon Eclipse), the git distributed version control system, the Heroku cloud-based hosting platform, memcache cache framework, and the Twitter/Bootstrap CSS framework.

There will be no required classroom times, however, we will encourage students to form teams and work together on assignments.

This course can be taken by those other than UH graduate students by registering through Outreach College.  Contact Philip Johnson for more details if interested, see the home page at http://ics691s13.wordpress.com/