Comment To Discount the naysayers (Score 4, Interesting) 45
The book used for this course is being judged by it's cover. It's really not that bad. The big problem with books in game dev is that there are none out there aimed at teaching people in an academic setting. Yes, win32 does suck, but the book does a good job of hiding those calls in objects. Using SDL would be nice, but it by itself doesn't do a whole lot of good since you still need to build a game engine on top of it. The University doesn't have the resources to do that and I don't know of any books that cover teaching how to build a game engine with SDL. If you have a better book, please share it because I've been looking.
Taking this course when you already have a significant amount of game experience is like taking a beginning CS course when you already know the basics. But for most people in the course, they don't have that experience.
GameMaker rocks. Sure, the games the class has made in it are "flash like", but Picasso didn't just start painting masterpieces. The point of using it is to get people to learn *The Process* of developing games. The technical side is not being overlooked, but for the limited amount of courses we have for gamedev, I feel it's the best approach.
People can discount the members of SVGA for not producing games up to their standards, but it exists so that people of any skill level can get together with others to produce games. There have been troubles with trying to accomondate different skill levels in the past, but it's something we're always trying to fix. (Assuming people tell us what's wrong) Regardless, without the countless hours the men and women in this group have spent working with faculty and going through red tape, the curriculum and course would not be a reality. I'd have rather spend that time playing Unreal Tournament, but I didn't because I want those that come after me to not be as lost in trying to start in game development as I was.
-J
Founder, SVGA Lafayette
