Lecture Archive

Click on a title to see the reading and course material.

Lecture 1 › Course Overview
This first lecture an overview of the course. We review the basic design processes, and talk about how this course differs from 3152. We also talk about the difference in expectations for the 4000 and 5000 versions.   Details ›

January 21, 2026 slides no demos
Lecture 2 › Mobile Gameplay
While mobile gaming is the largest market right now, it is our experience that many of you do not actually play mobile games. In this lecture, we highly what you should be aware of while brainstorming game ideas.   Details ›

January 23, 2026 slides no demos
Lecture 3 › Monetization
Today’s class has been cancelled due to the Cornell closing campus for the weather. But we do have a COVID-era video for you to watch.   Details ›

January 26, 2026 slides no demos
Lecture 4 › CUGL Architecture
As you get started on your project, it is time to start talking about software. This lecture gives an overview of CUGL and provides a lot of motivation for the lessons that follow.   Details ›

February 2, 2026 slides no demos
Lecture 5 › Scene Graphs
For students from the introductory course, scene graphs are one of the biggest changes in the new engine. They provide a stuctured way to organize your images and textures, beyond drawing directly to a sprite batch.   Details ›

February 4, 2026 slides no demos
Lecture 6 › Gameplay Modeling
The first major deliverable of the course is the nondigital prototype. In this lecture we talk about how to model a digital game without using software.   Details ›

February 6, 2026 slides no demos
Lecture 7 › 2D Animation
Scene graphs are obviously important for UI elements. But should you use them everywhere in your game. In this lecture we show why they are useful for basic animation as well.   Details ›

February 9, 2026 slides demos
Lecture 8 › Networking
Game networking is a complicated topic. But as we show in this lecture, it is possible in this course provided that you have the proper scope, and the proper support libraries.   Details ›

February 18, 2026 slides demos
Lecture 9 › Game Audio
Simple audio in CUGL is pretty straight forward if you look at the code demos. But as we show in this lecture, CUGL is capable of so much more, provided that you understand how game audio works.   Details ›

February 20, 2026 slides demos
Lecture 10 › Multithreading
Most of you will write your games using a single thread of execution. But sometimes performance constraints demand we add another thread. This is not as hard as you think it is.   Details ›

February 23, 2026 slides no demos
Lecture 11 › Graphics Pipeline
Everyone loves custom shaders. But how do you integrate them into CUGL and how do you get data to the shader? In this lecture we give an overview of how graphics works in CUGL so that we can understand this better.   Details ›

March 2, 2026 slides demos
Lecture 12 › Custom Pipelines
Now that we have had an overview of how graphics works, it is time to learn how to set-up a custom graphics pipeline in CUGL. While SpriteBatch is an extremely powerful tool, custom pipelines can allow us to do some really cool effects.   Details ›

March 4, 2026 slides demos
Lecture 13 › Level Design
After several programming lessons, it is time to return to design. With alpha release around the corner, we need to talk about how we do proper level design.   Details ›

March 16, 2026 slides no demos
Lecture 14 › Procedural Content
Procedural content is always something that people strive for, because it can make your game infinitely replayable. But as we show in this lecture, this is harder - not easier - than traditional level design.   Details ›

March 20, 2026 no slides no demos