What course would you take at a video game school?

[awesomerandomgamer99]

I saw this strange little youtube series about a group of students who went to a video game highschool, and this made me wonder something:
If you were to go to a videogame school, what course would you take? RPG? Platforming? FPS?

I personally would probably choose FPS.

[ccgr]

prefer RPGs for the stories, FPS for action

[Sstavix]

Coding.

Seriously - if you have enough knowledge about how to program, then you can do pretty much whatever game genre you want! Why limit yourself?

[Zerule]

I'd love to take any course that teaches me how to program bots/AI

[Deepfreeze32]

Game Engine Architecture, Graphics Programming, and AI.

I have experience ranging form rudimentary (Graphics) to fairly skilled (AI) in these topics, but I would really like to learn ways to apply them to games.

Sure, design patterns are fine and all. But experience is a wise teacher, and I would rather learn from someone who's been there before what the best practices for games are.

My experience with graphics consists of writing out an image to the screen. Woo. I need to learn a lot more here.

With AI, I would consider myself more skilled than most (Which isn't much, frankly), but the largely theory-heavy AI work I've done isn't feasible for the quick pace of games. Neural Networks show promise, but they are notoriously hard to design (We're talking weeks, if not months for a single network AFTER all the inputs and outputs have been determined). Most greedy algorithms work, but aren't as "smart" as we'd like. There isn't time to reason out the best possible move via brute force (Because we should assume P != NP), nor is there an easy way to do it with Dynamic Programming. Hidden Markov models are another novel approach, but are also incredibly hard to design. My understanding is that most AI in games is either really rudimentary, or "cheats".


Also wouldn't mind taking courses in art to improve my artistic talents. XD

[ArchAngel]

If we're talking about VGHS (although I think you could hardly classify VGHS as strange and little), probably Strategy, particularly 4X.
I would also get down with Ki's code-a-thon.


This being said, I have an active interest in what Deep, Zerule, and Sstavix answered.

[Emwok]

Well, I'd want to take a course in some sort of graphics since time and time again I have failed at coding.

[ZiggsTV]

I'm terrible at art but if there is one thing I would like to do in videos games it would be the artwork and animation.

[awesomerandomgamer99]

If we're talking about VGHS (although I think you could hardly classify VGHS as strange and little), probably Strategy, particularly 4X.
I would also get down with Ki's code-a-thon.


This being said, I have an active interest in what Deep, Zerule, and Sstavix answered.

Yeah, I was talking about VGHS. And yes, it is strange and little.

[ArchAngel]

It's released on Netflix. This is pretty monumental for a youtube series. And the production value, headed up by veteran FreddieW, is top notch.

Also, you must have a much smaller threshold for "strange" than I have.

The things I have seen...

[awesomerandomgamer99]

It's released on Netflix. This is pretty monumental for a youtube series. And the production value, headed up by veteran FreddieW, is top notch.

Also, you must have a much smaller threshold for "strange" than I have.

The things I have seen...

XD

[DeadManReedeemed]

I would most likely play video games more than learning code if I went to that kind of school. I learned how to use Unity, but I'm gonna start with Gamesalad.

[awesomerandomgamer99]

I would most likely play video games more than learning code if I went to that kind of school. I learned how to use Unity, but I'm gonna start with Gamesalad.

Cool.

[auskey08]

I would most likely choose sandbox games. I am a fan of seeing what I can build and how I can build it.

[DaveyWavey]

Well considering that it can be very time consuming and difficult programming for games, I'd take a course in that I'm already a software developer, but that's developing business applications. Graphics / Games programming is the hardest kind of Object Oriented programming. C++ Would be really good to learn.... I only program in C#.NET, VB.NET and Java. Maybe one day I'll make a game I'd really like to.