Lecturer for Web Development & Code Review associated with Games Academy Berlin
Languages used: C#C++TypeScript
Frameworks used: Node.jsUnityUnreal Engine 4
Target platforms: WebWindows
The project
Games Academy GmbH is the oldest european school solely dedicated to video game development.
Starting their first semester in 2000 in Berlin, Germany, Games Academy has expanded to Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 2007 and Vancouver, BC, Canada in 2010.
Offering courses like Game Programming, Game Design, Game Producing and Game Art & Animation, Games Academy tries to mimic positions inside the industry and meet it's demands with their courses as close as possible.
Besides having courses aligned with real-world vacancies, students are required to work on cross-disciplinary projects that are green lit and gated, similar to work with external publishers, each semester they spend at Games Academy. Thereby aiming to mirror real-world processes and provide experiences only obtainable through putting theoretical knowledge obtained in courses, to practical use.
These projects play a major part in grading students and their work, similar to practical and theoretical exams held in parallel. That way, it's guaranteed that information provided in lectures is understood and can be used independently by every student.
My tasks 10/2018 - 06/2019
My work is split up into two categories - hosting the third semester Web Advanced-course (CR350) and offering Code Review sessions.
Hostng the Web Advanced (CR350)-course for third semester students of the Game Programming-branch at the Berlin facility, we built on the foundational knowledge obtained in previous semesters and students were required to build a game server in TypeScript.
An accompanying presentation was built and used as a wrapper for the course: Starting off by teaching the basics of working with Node.js, it's package manager npm and TypeScript itself, stundents were then asked to independently integrate a websocket client into a client they were familiar with of their choosing, (Unity, Unreal, web-based clients, etc.) and build the game server separately in Node.js, compiled through TypeScript.
With TypeScript being on the rise of popularity and the easy adaptability of Node.js-based applications, I was aiming to provide insight into how a high-level stack and accompanying web-related tools can accelerate the development process over using a more traditional process. Additionally the benefits of having a separate, low performance-footprint game server built inside a separate toolchain were conveyed too.
Related topics like cloud hosting, testing frameworks and automated build generation were touched on as well, as they are often overlooked in short-span projects or by projects build with a smaller team size. Due to JavaScript's flexibility, this allowed us to use the exact code built by individual students for these examples, without having to integrate any further boilerplate-projects or framework code.
Additionally I'm providing Code Review-sessions across the entire semester, allowing students to present and get feedback on not just Games Academy-related, but also personal projects and their associated codebases.