Resources

Research Tools

• Literature Search
  • Voyager Many of the books in the library are a little bit old, but you can find many popular books there, e.g. about game design, game engine design, fundamentals of computer graphics, AI books etc.
  • Google The most basic search tool on the internet is the best research tool!
  • Citeseer An archive that includes most freely available computer science articles on the web. Allows you to find articles that reference the one that you are reading. The database is created by a web crawler, so there are some errors. Still, it's a good first place to look for publications. Be aware that a lot of copyrighted articles never appear in this archive. For this, the ACM and IEEE digitial libraries are important.
  • Google Scholar A product from Google that is similar to Citeseer.
  • The ACM Digital Library Archive of all publications by the Association for Computing Machinery, including SIGGRAPH conference proceedings until 2004, the journal Transactions on Graphics (which includes SIGGRAPH Proceedings from 2003, 2004, and 2005), and many other conferences and journals in the field. Database is hyperlinked so that you can find articles that reference the article that you are reading, as well other articles with related topics. The univeristy has a subscription to this service; you can access it from any campus machine.
  • IEEE Xplore The IEEE's digital library. Includes computer graphics journals and conferences such as Computer Graphics and Applications. In principle, it has a citation and indexing service, but it does not seem as well developed as the ACM's. The univeristy has a subscription to this service; you can access it from any campus machine.
• Other Literature Resources
  • Tim Rowley's Paper Archive Tim indexes all SIGGRAPH papers since 2000 and provides links to downloadable versions of these papers that are publicly available. He also does this with several other graphics conferences. It is very convenient to browse, and you can use it without subscription. But it's not complete.
  • The Auckland University Library Has real paper books and journals. Also a wide array of electronic resources. The Computer Science subject librarian, Shannon Wellington maintains a list of resources for computer scientists. She's also available for help with library research.
• Resources for Report Writing
  • ELSAC Auckland Uni's English Language Self Access Centre (ELSAC) offers a free service to help improve your English.

Game Resources

• 2004 COMPSCI 777 Lecture Notes
  • The lecture notes and course material from the 2004 game technology course are available at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/compsci777s2c/archive/
• AI Resources
  • Proceedings of the 2005 IJCAI Workshop on Reasoning, Representation, and Learning in Computer Games (pdf file)
  • Artificial Intelligence & Interactive Digital Entertainment website
• Game Web Sites:
  • GameTutorials.com: http://www.gametutorials.com/
  • Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/
  • FlipCode.com: http://www.flipcode.com/
  • GameDeveloper.net: http://www.gamedev.net/
  • IGDA (Intl. Game Developers Assoc.): http://www.igdn.com/
  • NZGDA (NZ Game Developers Assoc.): http://www.nzgda.com/
  • IGDA Auckland Student Chapter: http://auckland.igda.org.nz/
  • Virtual Terrain Project: http://www.vterrain.org/
    • New Zealand virtual terrain sources
    • Volcanoes of Auckland (with VRML 3D virtual fly throughs)
• Game Engines:
  • Quake I-III: http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/.
  • The Nebula Device: http://www.nebuladevice.org/
  • Irrlicht: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/
  • Fly3D: http://www.fly3d.com.br/
    • Fly3D HTML Help pages (click on link to open or right click and use "Save Target As" to download)
  • You can find a whole list of links to game engines here.
• 3D Libraries:
  • OpenGL,GLU,GLUT - see COMPSCI 372 webpage.
  • Ogre 3D: http://www.ogre3d.org/
• Web articles and info for "newbies" who wish to become game programmers
  • So You Want To Enter The Game Industry? by Ben "Digiben" Humphrey of GameTutorials.com 
  • So you want to be a games designer? by Ed Bartlett of bitmap-brothers.co.uk 
  • DigiPen Institute of Technology - the Ultimate Game Developer's School (DigiBen's alma mater)
• Data files and other resources
  • Site for free 3D polygon mesh models: 3D Cafe.
  • Quake II and Quake II models, tools, specs, etc.:http://www.planetquake.com/polycount.

Textbooks and reference books:

• OpenGL
  • Edward Angel, "OpenGL, A Primer", Addison Wesley Longman, 2002.
  • OpenGL Architecture Review Board (Mason Woo, Jackie Neider, Tom Davis), "OpenGL Programming Guide", Second or Third Edition, Addison Wesley Longman.
• Windows Programming
  • Prosise, "Programming Windows with MFC"
  • Petzold, "Programming Windows"
  • Richter, "Advanced Windows"
• 3D Computer Graphics
  • Hill, F.S., "Computer Graphics using Open GL", 2nd ed., Prentice Hall, 2001
  • Edward Angel, "Interactive Computer Graphics, A Top-Down Approach with OpenGL", Third Edition, Addison Wesley Longman, 2003
• Game Graphics and Programming
  • David H. Eberly, "3D Game Engine Design", Morgan Kaufmann, 2000.
  • Tomas Akenine-Moller, Eric Haines, "Real-Time Rendering", 2nd edition, A K Peters Ltd, 2002.
  • Andre LaMothe, "Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus", SAMS Publishing, 2003.
  • Alan Watt, Fabio Policarpo, "3D Games (Vol. 1) - Real-time Rendering and Software Technology ", Addison Wesley, 2003.
  • Alan Watt, Fabio Policarpo, "3D Games (Vol. 2) - Animation and Advanced Real-Time Rendering ", Addison Wesley, 2003.
• Gaming-related topics
  • David Luebke, Martin Reddy, Jonathan D. Cohen, Amitabh Varshney, Benjamin Watson, Robert Huebner, "Level of Detail for 3D Graphics", Morgan Kaufmann, 2002.
  • Sandeep Singhal and Michale Zyda, "Networked Virtual Environments, Design and Implementation",  ACM Press and Addison Wesley Longman, 1999 (ISBN 0-201-32557-8).

Graphics & Programming Resources

• OpenGL/GLU
  • IntroductionToOpenGLand.NET: Tutorial which explains how OpenGL projects are created using MS Visual C/C++ 7.0 under .NET (used in COMPSCI 372 S1 C).
    
    • Example in section 1.1: Available as source file ass1a.cpp
    • Example in section 1.4: Available as .NET solution OpenGLExampleNET.zip or source file drawObjects.cpp
  • Microsoft OpenGL/GLU libraries and header files: opengl95.exe
  • OpenGL/GLU manual: indexOpenGLManual.html ( also available as download GLandGLU_man_pages.zip)
  • OpenGL v.1.3 specification: OpenGL_spec_1_3.pdf
  • OpenGL v.1.5. specification: glspec15.pdf
  • OpenGL v2.0 specification: glspec20.pdf
  • OpenGL Shading Language specification v1.10: GLSLangSpec.Full.1.10.59.pdf
  • OpenGL extensions header: glext.h
  • OpenGL Examples (from the OpenGL Programming Guide): Available as .NET solution OpenGL_ExamplesNET.zip, as VS 6.0 workspace OpenGL_ExamplesVS6.zip or as individual source files OpenGL_ExamplesSourceFiles.zip.
  • (Semi-)automated extension loading libraries: GLEW, GLee, extglgen, OglExt
• GLUT
  • GLUT libraries and header files (compatible with opengl32 and glu32). Originally written by Mark Kilgard, ported to Win32 (Windows 95,98,Me,NT,2000,XP) by Nate Robins: glut-3_7_6-bin.zip
  • GLUT manual (ps-files): indexGLUTManual.html ( also available as download GLUT_man_pages.zip)
  • GLUT v.3 specification: glut-3-spec.pdf
  • GLUT manual: online HTML files at opengl.org web site.
• ANSI C
  • DEC C Language manual (contains all ANSI C constructs and some DEC specific extensions): DEC C Language manual
  • ANSI C Standard Library: DEC C documentation or C Standard Library documentation by Ross Richardson.
• C++
  • Thinking in C++, Copyright (c) 2000, Bruce Eckel (http://www.BruceEckel.com). The following two links are local copies for use in this class only:
    • Volume 1: Contents
    • Volume 2: Contents
  •   Some notes for Java programmers who are learning C++
  •   Some notes comparing C++ and Java