   Game Programming Class
  I'm going to be teaching a game programming class to some friends at my school in the fall and I'm trying to come up with some kind of structured outline of topics to cover. Has anyone done anything like this before and have some sort of outline I could use. I'm not looking for something too specific, I'm just looking for a general outline, sort of like a course syllabus. Any help would be great.FYI the school that I'm attending is the University of Toledo.   
  What kind of experience level are these students at? What do you want them to be able to do once they complete the class?   ;  For the most part all of them have taken and intro to C++ course. I know I'm going to have to review pointers with them and I'm thinking of using the first week to refresh them on some other topics.The plan right now is to meet once a week for 2 hours for all of the fall semester. I'd like for them to be able to learn windows programming and introduce them to direct draw and get them fluent with it, then if there is enough time I would like to mabey start on 3D. Most have them have taken Calc 3 and are going to be taken Linear Algebra, so I know that they are all pretty good with math. They've also taken a Digital Logic course in wich they were introduced to mealy and moore sequential circuits, wich could come in handy when i teach them AI.   ;  That sounds less like game programming and more like graphics programming. If it is a game programming class make sure to make games =).I took game programming and Intro to Graphics in college(2004-2008). In the game programming class we used game maker, and made 4 games! we also spent the first 4-5 weeks of class in java programming AI for tic-tac-toe and then othello... the teacher provided the front end (board class with click and and X/0 shows up), and it was up to the students to implement an AI/game rules (Othello was a good challenge). our final project was a presentation on something in games, i did mine on the euphoria animation engine and talked about what that meant for future games (this was in fall 07).The Graphics class was purely theoretical and mathmatical, with OpenGL. That teacher was/is a consultant for pixar and covered things like normalization, gourade(sp?) shading, ray tracing, and showed us a lot of neat stuff. It was more of a show and tell, here is some math and neat little programs kind of class.I think the most important thing I missed out on and later wish i learned, was a formal education of a modern graphics pipeline, and how you go from game object to something on the screen (ie modelview/projection ... object space, world space, view space, screen space). I went back the following semester and lectured the same graphics class (I learned a LOT on my own after) and went through that stuff, and blew everyones mind. when i left there i gave them a list of every concept relating to shader pipelines/rendering. I didnt expect them to remember everything, but at least they had a nice reference sheet to google =).Phew, thats a lot, sorry. Hope that helps =)Oh and one more thing, there is a LOT to cover in graphics/game programming, might be wise to "choose your turf" so to speak. ;  I do plan on having them make games too. lol.My tentative list is in this order:Guess My Number (Cmd Prompt)Hang Man (Cmd Prompt)One or two more Cmd Prompt gamesWindows APITetris2 Player PongBreaking Bricks1 Player Pong with Basic AIDirect XSprite Demo and more AI - Move around on a single screen and try to shoot the COM before it gets youPlatformer Like Mario;  You could end up spending a lot of time talking about the WinAPI etc that doesn't really have anything to do with making games. You could consider using a library like SDL or SFML which will reduce the amount of unrelated material you have to introduce.   