CS121 Course Page

The objective of this course is to introduce you to the theory and practice of software design and development. You will study the stages of development from requirements specification and analysis through design, implementation, and testing. You will study ways to organize and manage these stages. You will also learn principles of software design including design patterns and anti-patterns. You will apply these principles and techniques in the design and development of an educational computer game.

We focus on games for several reasons. Games are fun projects and most students have a strong sense of what constitutes a good product. More importantly, games require solutions to a broad range of problems that rarely show up in a single software project. Games are real-time systems with stringent performance constraints. They require good user interface design. They typically use computer graphics and sound. Games can draw on other areas of computer science as well, such as artificial intelligence, computer networking, and computer art. And they often involve the modeling and simulation of physical systems, which requires concepts from mathematics, engineering, and physics.

Course Project

You will work in a team to build an educational game for one of our client teachers and her/his students:

Greg Orr, Hillside Middle School in Kalamazoo, MI
Michelle Townsley, Rio del Valle Middle School, Oxnard, CA .
Leslie Wallace, Sycamore Middle School, Claremont, CA
Robyn Herbig, Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School, Lihue, HI

You will interact with teachers and students at these schools. Artifacts you produce will be critiqued by middle school students on a bi-weekly basis. The game you develop will be further polished over the summer by HMC research students and eventually released for use by teachers across the country.

The project is divided into four phases:

Grades

Your grade will depend on your semester-long design/development project as well as a midterm exam, quizzes, and class participation:

Game project	80%
Daily quizzes	10%
Class participation	10%

(Note: During most class meetings, you will work with your team on in-class activities that advance your game project so attendance is required. You will post a short note about your ativites on your wiki. Additional "participation points" can be earned by contributing to class discussion and identifying bugs, errors, typos, bad links, etc. in the class notes, web pages, etc.)

Textbooks

Code Complete by McConnell

Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design by McLaughlin, Pollice, and West

Schedule

Date	Topic	Readings due	Assignment due	Links	Middle School activity
Tues 1-17	Introduction			Intro Questionnaire Project phase I Games Network web site Lab 0: Game critique	Project intro
Thurs 1-19	Requirements	Code Complete (CC) 3.1-3.4,20.1 Head First (HF) Ch 1,2 Ambler: BRUF		Lab 1: First management update	Project intro
Tues 1-24	Customer Elicitation	HF Ch 3,4	Management update Competitive analysis High concept Customer elicitation prep
Thurs 1-26	Requirements modeling Design practice	CC 3.5, 5.1-5.4 HF Ch 5		PacMan use cases Class diagrams Sequence diagrams Lab 2: Use cases
Tues 1-31	Design principles	HF Ch 6,7, 8	Management update Customer elicitation report Game treatment Use cases Tech assessment	UMLet: UML tool Lab 3: Domain diagram	Treatment critique
Thurs 2-2	Lab only (Z gone)			Lab 4a: CRC cards Lab 4b: Code policy	Treatment critique
Tues 2-7	Design patterns	Huston Design Patterns: Singleton, Adapter, Bridge, Observer, Strategy	Management update Prototype Proposal	Project: Phase II Phase I project feedback Phase I team feedback Lab 5: Alpha goal stack
Thurs 2-9	User interface design Reviews	usability.net: User-centric design Bay: Designing games that don't suck Glinert: Upping your game's usability		Lab 6: Task analysis
Tues 2-14	Usability testing	Lewis & Rieman: Ch 0-5	Management update Inital architecture design Architecture design review package Weekly prototype/code	Lab 7: Architecture Review Prep	Prototype critique
Thurs 2-16	Architecture design review				Prototype critique
Tues 2-21	UI test		Management update Revised architecture Initial UI design UI test Weekly prototype/code
Thurs 2-23	Testing	CC Ch 20, 22		Lab 8: Test plans
Tues 2-28	Lab only (Z gone)		Management update Final UI design Test plan Test plan review package Weekly prototype/code	Lab 9: Test plan review prep	UI Critique
Thurs 3-1	Test plan review				UI Critique
Tues 3-6	Alpha testing		Management update Alpha	Lab 10: Alpha testing
Thurs 3-8	Presentations			Lab 11: Alpha presentation
Tues 3-13	Spring break				Alpha test
Thurs 3-15	Spring break				Alpha test
Tues 3-20	Alpha presentation			Project: Phase III Lab 12: Mgt Update (beta goal stack)
Thurs 3-22	Code quality	CC Ch 21, 24 Green: Unmaintainable Code		Lab 13: Code critique
Tues 3-27	Refactoring	Atwood: Code smells	Management update Prototype/code Code policy Static code analysis	Lab 14: Code standards evaluation	Learning objectives
Thurs 3-29	No class			Lab 15: Code walkthrough prep	Learning objectives
Tues 4-3	Code walkthrough		Management update Prototype/code Code walkthrough
Thurs 4-5		Wired: User testing of Halo		Lab 15: User test prep
Tues 4-10	User testing, User testing demo 1		Management update Prototype/code	Lab 16: User test
Thurs 4-12	User testing demo 2
Tues 4-17	Beta presentations		Management update Beta	Project: Phase IV	Beta test
Thurs 4-19	Beta tests				Beta test
Tues 4-24	Final report review Code freeze		Management update Final report (draft for review) Code review package
Thurs 4-26	Code review
Tues 5-8 (2:00 PM, exam time)	Final presentations V1 Testing		Final project submission

Last updated Jan. 2012

Harvey Mudd College Computer Science

CS121: Software Development

Spring 2012

Lecture:

Professor:

Course mailing list:

Course trac:

Releases:

Tutors/Graders:

What This Course Is About

Course Project

Grades

Textbooks

Schedule

Harvey Mudd College
Computer Science