Richard G Baldwin (512) 223-4758, NRG Room 4238, Baldwin@DickBaldwin.com, http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/

GAME2302 Mathematical Applications for Game Development

This is the main web page for classroom sections and Distance Learning sections taught by Professor Baldwin at

http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/Spring17/Game2302WebPage/GAME2302.htm

Main Web Page

Spring 2017

Revised 10/21/16

General

This is the main web page for this course. This page, along with the pages pointed to by Links and the online Blackboard program are used to establish the "rules of the road" for the course.

This page contains important information on many different topics in no particular order. Other pages pointed to by Links contain information that is more specific as indicated by the title of the page.

Read the syllabus
You should read the syllabus for this course before reading further in this page.

Orientation:
All students are required to complete the online orientation. Click here to complete your online orientation.

Use of the Blackboard online system
The online program named Blackboard will be used for communicating with students, such as reporting grades, posting announcements, sending Email messages to individual students, and broadcasting Email messages to all students enrolled in the course

The Blackboard Assignment and Test features are the mechanisms that you will use to submit your assignments and to take your tests.

The Blackboard "Send Email" feature is the mechanism that you will use to send Email messages to your instructor.

Spam blocking software
I receive several hundred email messages every day. Many of the messages that I receive contain viruses or worms. Most of the rest are SPAM.

Therefore, whenever you send a new email message to me, you MUST use the Blackboard "Send Email" feature to construct and send the message, and your Subject line MUST contain a brief description of the topic. (Don't simply reply to an earlier email message from me if the topic is different.)

When I see that format, I will trust that the message is safe to open and read. Otherwise, I will assume that your message contains a virus or constitutes SPAM, and I will simply delete your message without reading it.

Questions via Email:
From time to time you may need to ask questions via email, and I encourage you to do so. However, please make the question as specific as possible. For example, "What is a vector dot product?" is not a question that I can easily answer via email.

If you, like many others, procrastinate and save your questions until the day before an assignment or test deadline, don't be surprised if you don't get a response from me until after the deadline has passed.

I am usually happy to answer questions about mathematics, physics, and programming concepts at the level of this course. However, please don't ask me to tell you how to write the program for an assignment. It is almost certain that I won't do so. It isn't fair for me to provide information about how to write an assignment program to one student when all students don't have an opportunity to hear the question and the answer.

I am here to help you, so don't hesitate to ask for help when you need it.

Response to email
I normally respond to student email messages within 24 hours except on weekends. If you send a message to me and you don't receive a response within 24 hours (allow 72 hours on weekends), make certain that your Subject line is correctly formatted and send the message again.

Help me debug my program
Please don't waste our time by asking me to help you debug your programs. The best way to debug is to avoid errors in the first place. Then there won't be any bugs that require attention.

If you understand the requisite physics, math, and programming concepts, the only bugs that you will incur will be the result of careless errors on your part. I won't waste my time showing you how to correct for your own carelessness.

If you need help with programming fundamentals using the Java programming language, see Jb0103 Preface to Programming Fundamentals and the modules that follow that one in this Ebook.

Failure to Meet Prerequisites:
Please don't ask me to teach the MATH1316 trigonometry material to you. If you don't already understand that material, it will be your responsibility to learn it, on your own, without assistance from me.

Getting Started:
See the module titled GAME 2302-0095: Preface to GAME 2302 in my Ebook titled GAME 2302 - Mathematical Applications for Game Development.

Carelessness is costly
A few semesters back, on the last Friday of the month, which was anticipated to be one of the most active trading days of the month, programmers working on a network made a careless error and shut the NASDAQ stock exchange down for several hours. There is no way of estimating how much this cost various people around the world.

A few months later, programmers working for a telephone company made a careless programming error and swamped the 911 emergency call center in Austin with wrong numbers for several hours. Hopefully no one died as a result, but we will never know.

Although careless errors on assignments may not be as costly as the errors described above, they are costly nonetheless. In fact, the cost for making a careless error on an assignment program is just as costly as not knowing how to write the program in the first place. In either case, you get no credit for the program. So, don't be careless.

Who Am I?
I receive many email messages addressed to Dr. Baldwin, and I appreciate the courtesy. My highest degree earned is a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering, and I am a full Professor at ACC. Under the circumstances, Prof. Baldwin is a more appropriate salutation than Dr. Baldwin.

Please Be Patient
Other than questions regarding registration, please do not send email regarding this course prior to the first day of classes. If you do, I probably won't answer it. A great deal of preparation is required to teach a course of this nature. I have many responsibilities to take care of in the final days before the course begins and I do not have the time to work with individual students until after the course actually begins. If I reach the point that I can accept email regarding this course prior to the first day of classes, I will post that fact as a Blackboard announcement.

Problems in ACC NRG labs
I have been informed that there is a problem when students attempt to execute Java applications out of the root directory in the ACC labs at NRG. Apparently if you create a directory and compile and execute your programs out of that directory, the problem will go away. Laboratory personnel are working on the problem.

Computer Studies Student Information Form
The following information is requested by the Computer Studies department, but is not a requirement of the course in which you are enrolled. Whether or not you provide the following information will not be taken into account when determining your grade in the course.

If you are willing to provide this information, please compose and send an e-mail message, using the Blackboard "Send Email" feature containing the following information.

Make the subject line of your e-mail message read as follows:

Student Information Form

DO NOT include this information in the message that you send confirming that you have completed online orientation. Send separate messages for those two purposes.

You should be able to copy and paste the following form into your Blackboard e-mail client and then fill in the blanks. Don't be too concerned about neatness when filling in the form.

Last Name:_____________________
First Name:_____________________
Student ID:_____________________
Course Number: IT__ ____

Telephone Numbers

Home:___________
Work:___________
Other:___________
E-mail address:_________

Any issues that the instructor should be aware of:

_________________________________________________

Reasons for taking the course:

_____Personal Interest
_____Required by degree program, which is ______________
_____Work related - please explain in comments section below
_____Recommended by ______________________________
_____Other, please explain in comments section below

Please indicate the following:

_____Hours working per week
_____Number of credit hours enrolled in this semester
_____Number of computer courses completed at ACC
_____Highest degree earned

What computer courses have you completed at ACC or elsewhere?

_____________________________________________________

What computer or computer related work experience do you have?

_____________________________________________________

Comments:

_____________________________________________________

Discussion during office hours
Whether you are a regular classroom student or a Distance Learning student, if you don't understand everything that you need to understand about the material for this course, you need to be talking to me about it during my office hours. Often a short explanation will get you past a roadblock and get you back on the track to learning what you need to learn.

The Importance of Sun's Java Documentation
I cannot overemphasize the importance of learning how to use Sun's Java documentation for aspiring Java programmers. I have published a lesson titled Java OOP: Java Documentation, which you would do well to study.

Your official Email address
It is my understanding that all ACC students have been provided an official Email address by ACC, and that address is reflected in all official ACC student records. I have been told that you can cause messages sent to that address to be forwarded to the Email address of your choice. You should make it a point to either forward those messages, or to check your ACC email address on a daily basis.

When I need to send a broadcast message to all students in the course, (and in most other cases as well) I will send that message to your official ACC Email address. If you don't check you mail at that address, you won't get the message.

Also, if I need to send feedback to you regarding problems with an assignment, I will normally send that message to your official ACC Email address. I don't provide feedback inside of Blackboard because the course becomes inaccessible to you in Blackboard when the semester ends.


Links

If things don't seem to be working properly when you follow these links, you may need to clear your cache or force a reload or both.


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File: GAME2302.htm

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