School of Engineering and Information Sciences

MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY

EXAMINATION PAPER

2009/2010 Winter/Spring term

MODULE TITLE: Advanced Topics in Games Development

MODULE NUMBER: CMT 3325

MODULE LEADER’S NAME: Chris Huyck

___________________________________________________________________

Time allowed: 3 hours	 

Total number of questions:	 4					

Instructions to candidates:	Answer all questions.  Each question carries 25 marks.

Materials provided:								

Equipment permitted: The book Programming Game AI by Example (by Buckland) is allowed, along with one A4 page marked as notes on the top.  Please submit that page with the exam (it will not be marked).

Total number of pages:	

No books, papers or electronic devise are permitted to be brought into the examination room other than any specified above.

Candidates are warned that illegible scripts will not be marked	

1.  Automata and Semantic Nets  (25 marks)

A. 5 points
A Finite State Automata (FSA) is a graph.  What do the nodes mean, and what do the arcs mean?

B.8 marks
  Here's a particular noughts and crosses game:
 XBB
 BOB
 BOX
 B means blank.  Write an FSA that plays O from this state.

C.5 marks
  A semantic net is also a graph.  What do the nodes and what do the arcs mean?

D 7 marks
  Draw a semantic net for weapons in a modern first person shooter game.  Include ISA and instance arcs.

Question 2 Physics (25 marks)
A. 8 marks.
   The voyager space ship is currently beyond Pluto, 16.6 billion KM from the sun, and travelling at 60,000 km per hour.  It is almost entirely unaffected by the Sun's gravity or any other body’s.  How fast will it be going next year?  Paraphrase (or quote) Newton's principle that enables you to determine this speed.
B. 9 marks. 
   The weight of Mars is roughly 6.4x1023 kg, and its radius is 3400 km.  How much force would it exert on someone standing on its surface?
C. 8 marks
Discuss the accuracy vs. calculation trade-off regarding physical motion in videogames.

Question 3 Search and Search Spaces (25 marks)

Here is a maze we discussed in class.  Start at S and get to the goal G.
A. (5 marks)  
Describe the maze as a graph.
B. (5 marks)
How big is the search space?
C. (7 marks)
Write an algorithm that will find a path from the start to the goal state in any such non-cyclic maze.
D. (8 marks)
Describe simulated annealing and the characteristics of the search spaces that it is good for.

Question 4 Components and OO techniques (25 marks)
A.  (5 marks)
In the Spacewars game we did in the early labs and for the first course work, we created a specialized agent subclass.  This did not fit in particularly well with the class structure of the game.  What were the problems?  

B.  (5 marks)
What would have been a better class structure to resolve these problems? 

C. (7 marks)
Scripting is frequently used in games to create content.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of scripting?

D. (8 marks)
The crystal space games engine that we encountered in the labs uses smart pointers.  What are some advantages and disadvantages of smart pointers?