BSc in COMPUTER SCIENCE (CS)

The module will combine the theory and psychology of VR with practical development skills. You will learn the skills needed to design compelling VR environments and the skills that apply to creative practice, science and industry.

This module aims to give you the skills needed to develop VR. These skills include understanding the basic theory of presence in VR, which underlies the basic design principles. You will also learn practical development skills, using an appropriate 3D engine to create interactive virtual environments. These skills will include creating 3D environments, designing and implementing 3D interaction for VR and building social VR experiences with interactive virtual characters.

This module will introduce you to i) industry standard tools for game development, such as game engines, and ii) the process of game development, including prototyping and playtesting. You will undertake a short series of game development projects, each lasting a set number of weeks and with a specific brief. For each project, you will propose a game that fits the brief, and then you will implement it. You are expected to deliver the proposed game and document it thoroughly. Through this process, you will develop an awareness of intended audience and the use of media for documentation.

Contemporary video game production draws on a range of techniques from artificial intelligence (AI) to perform tasks such as controlling virtual agents and generating novel game content. This module will also introduce crucial game AI concepts. Compared to mainstream AI, the emphasis is less on optimal problem solving and more on entertaining the player with limited computational resources. This module gives students practical experience of programming game AI systems and an understanding of the relevant theory.

This course provides an introduction to the development and programming of hardware devices that can sense and act in the environment. The course will explain and demonstrate how the environment, which is inherently continuous, can be monitored by analogue electrical and mechanical sensors, then captured and analysed using a computer, which is a discrete system. A focus of this course is the interface between the digital and the analogue.

This study encompasses basic physics, electronics, programming and software engineering. The practical objective of this course is the development of the skills needed for designing and building interactive physical devices.