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STUDY LEVEL
Diploma
TUITION
$67,699 CAD
DURATION
2 years
INTAKES
Sep/Jan
DELIVERY MODE
On campus
about the course
What will you learn?
The Advanced Game Development Diploma program teaches industry-level classes covering core disciplines in game development, including art, design, programming, and production. Throughout the course students will create a variety of projects and games that will contribute to a portfolio to enter the games industry.
student gallery
Graduate with an outstanding portfolio
Participate in rewarding projects
Students create a collaborative game project in their final term
course structure
term 1
Game Design
Students will learn the fundamentals of game design and development by deep diving into core game design theory and principals such as game feel, player psychology, choice, and more. Throughout the course, students will produce design documents that familiarize them with the process of turning their creative ideas into tangible work.
Technical Design
Students will learn advanced features of the Unreal Engine and apply their knowledge of programming, art and design to create more technically inclined content, such as advanced AI, gameplay objects, terrain, foliage, physics objects, particle effects, and more. Each will be a piece for their technical design and technical art portfolio.
Environmental Art
Students will discover the fundamentals of video game asset creation using industry standard tools. In this course, students will create a game ready environment and props in Maya and craft textures and materials in Photoshop and Substance Painter. These assets will then be brought forward to present in a portfolio setting.
Game Programming I
Students learn the fundamental elements of programming in C#. Students will learn about variables, functions, loops, arrays and object-oriented programming. Students will learn about physics, animation, and handling player input. Using Unity and C#, students will learn how to make a small game from scratch.
term 2
Level Design
Students will learn and practice level design theory while building a level from concept to polish. Students will go through the level design process: documentation, blocking layouts, implementing gameplay, asset placement and finally polishing the experience. By the end of the course students will have a portfolio ready playable level for an action-adventure game.
Visual Scripting
Students will deep dive into Unreal’s blueprint visual scripting system to learn how to create gameplay within the engine. Programming concepts such as functions, variables, arrays, loops will be taught to the students from a visual scripting perspective while also understanding and utilizing Unreal’s Gameplay Framework.
Character Art
Students will a focus on crafting game ready characters in Zbrush & Maya and producing textures and materials in Photoshop and Substance Painter. During the course students will familiarize with node-based materials production, work with in-engine lighting, rendering and post-processing.
Game Programming II
Students continue to dive deeper into Unity and C#. Using Singletons, Coroutines, Dictionaries, Stacks, events, networking & serializing, they will create small games in class, and customize it with their own features. Students will create custom systems for UI Management, Pathfinding & Object Pooling.
term 3
User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) Design
Students will learn and apply UI/UX best principles and practices, while designing and building a UI system from concept to shippable. Students will follow the full UX process from start to finish strategizing, define, design & prototype, verify & iterate, implement and document. By the end of the course, students will have a comprehensive understanding of understanding the user and their needs and have a workable Mobile Game UI and case study for their portfolio.
Rapid Prototype Development
Students will form multidisciplinary teams to design and create over a dozen game prototypes. Students will learn to leverage constraints to bolster creativity, work productively under tight timelines by managing their time effectively, and learn to effectively communicate in a demanding production environment.
Character Animation
Students will build a new skillset to include rigging and animating for games characters. In the course students will create a set of game ready animations while applying animation principles. They will incorporate industry standard motion capture data, plan a production and be prepared for iteration during development.
Game Programming III
IIn this final Game Programming course, students will be shown advanced features of Unity and C#, such as Scriptable Objects, Dynamic Asset Loading, using MBAAS software and custom render pipelines. By creating our own mobile strategy game, students will learn how to create an asynchronous multiplayer game.
term 4
Systems Design
This course deep dives into systems design and its various subsets – including multiplayer systems, social systems, world systems, and core gameplay systems. Students will learn fundamental design theory, such as compulsion loops, input/output, economies, and more. Students will design their own systems with design documentation like briefs, spreadsheets, flowcharts, and wireframes. They will then prove out their designs by prototyping them in-engine.
Rapid Game Development I
In this course students will work together in collaborative teams to rapidly produce multiple small, but focused games made in either Unreal or Unity that can server as portfolio pieces. Students will learn and apply project management and quality assurance skills and processes to manage their game’s production, reduce bugs and to ensure quality.
Technical Art
Using Unreal, students will learn the different facets of technical art, including advanced material functionality, creating particle effects, static and skeletal mesh and animation features. Students will also build their own tools and scripts for asset pipelines and workflows.
Shaders and Rendering
Students will be introduced to a variety of 3D rendering techniques, focusing on shaders, lighting and custom rendering pipelines. Using both Unity and Unreal, students will learn how to create custom shaders using a node-based approach.
term 5
Storytelling and Narrative Design
Students will learn narrative design by planning, designing, writing, and implementing a quest for an open world game – including writing characters, dialogues and story structures. Students will be able to identify and the difference between story writing and narrative design, and practice both by creating story bibles, cine scripts, barks and narrative features.
Rapid Game Development II
Students will continue the process of rapidly producing focused games in collaborative teams, but with increased project scope. Students will learn how to become effective producers on their projects, and how to properly market their games.
Procedural Art
Students will continue to develop their design and art skills by creating procedural and modular content. Students will utilize Maya to make their own modular level kit and utilize Houdini to make a procedurally generated terrain for an open world FPS game.
Developing for Extended Reality (XR)
Using state of the art hardware, students will be introduced to Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality. From both a technical and design perspective, students will learn about best practices for creating games for these platforms, and they will be introduced to a wide range of custom solutions that make it possible to develop for XR.
term 6
Industry Project 1: Pre-Production
The first of four sequential final project courses in which students form teams, ideate, pitch, and draft documentation about a single game concept. Working from these documents, the students then create a playable prototype proving out their main feature. This pre-production process allows students to be production ready for their game moving forward. Staff and industry mentors will guide and give feedback to the student teams.
Industry Project 2: First Production
The second of four sequential final project courses where students start production on their final game to deliver a playable vertical slice and prove out the core gameplay loop. Industry mentors will work closely with the students to provide meaningful feedback for them to implement to improve their games.
Industry Project 3: Production
The third of four sequential final project courses where students will continue to work in collaborative teams to produce a game. Students will focus on production to deliver two major game production milestones, alpha and beta, while taking guidance and feedback from staff and industry mentors and honing their professional communication skills.
Capstone Industry Project: Game Development
The last of four sequential final project courses where students focus on fixing bugs, polishing, and presenting their games. Students will have a chance to network with and showcase their games to working industry professionals. Throughout this course students will engage with an industry partner to create a real life product and also develop marketing material to help promote their games and create a resume and portfolio while seeking employment.
ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
How to apply to this course?
- Credit in English 30-1 or 65% in English 30-2 or equivalent
- Credit in Math 30-1 or Math 30-2 or equivalent
- OR
- Successful completion of the General Educational Development test
- OR
- Satisfactory results on the Bow Valley College Admissions Test
- AND
- Portfolio submission of 15-20 pieces of artistic/technical work.
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