Austin Anderson

Gaming Development Fundamentals

Certification Ready Questions
Lesson 1
1. Which game genre do you suggest if your target audience consists of children
in the age group of 10 to 14 years? Narrowing it down to one genre would not
account for the different preferences in genre.
2. What are the different types of games? Action, Adventure, Sports, Simulation,
RPG, Fantasy, Card, Board
3. Which game platform is ideal for a person who travels a lot and wants
entertainment during transit? Mobile platforms, such as the 3ds, PS Vita, and
smartphone games.
4. What are the most common devices used with game consoles? Controllers
5. Which game types are best suited for the PC platform? Games that require
the internet or special hardware.
6. What are arcade games? Games using a coin operated arcade machine.
7. What are the types of mobile devices? Cellphones, Smartphones, PDAS,
tablets.
8. Which game types are suitable for the different game devices? Arcade=
Social, public games. PC, Console = SinglePlayer, Mutliplayer, and online
games. Mobile= Single player and online games
9. What is the significance of conceptualizing a game? Listing your ideas,
fleshing them out, setting the rules, and finalizing the characters are all
important.
10.Can you name three different quests? Kill Quest, Collection Quest, Target
Quest
11.What is a suitable task mechanic for an adventure game? Kill terrorists, save
hostages.
12.What are three commonly used how to win mechanics? Loss Avoidance,
Eliminating opponents, Logic
13.What are suitable goals for a fantasy game? Rescuing the princess.

Lesson 2
1. What are the commonly used input devices for video games? Controllers,
Mouse and Keyboard, Joystick
2. What is a control pad? A game controller, usually bundled with a console.
3. How is a mouse used in games? Aming and controlling the character.
4. What are gaming keyboards? Fancy Smancy keyboards designed with gaming
in mind.
5. What is Kinect? A experimental motion sensor used for gaming.

6. How is a mobile device used for gaming? Touchscreen or Phone button

controls.
7. What is the role of a steering wheel in games? To steer an in game vehicle.
8. How is a joystick used in games? To steer planes or spaceships.
9. How do display devices influence game output? The grahpics, the ability to
play the game, how you see the game, target audience.
10.Why are different games more appropriate for different display types?
Because playing a low resolution mobile game on a high resolution television
would not look good.
11.How does the display quality of a handheld device differ from that of a PC or
a console? It has much poorer grahpics, and the resolution is much lower.
12.How do sound devices influence games? The provide a feel for the game
environment and help immerse the player in the game.
13.What are the ways to manage the performance of the TPS strategy game?
Compromise graphics quality.
14.How does the memory requirement of different console devices affect game
performance? The more memory a gamer requires, the more memory is
required of the console to run it well.
15.How does the memory requirement of mobile devices affect game
performance? They dont have much, so the quality of the games and the
performance is lower.
16.How does the memory requirement of PCs affect game performance? The
memory in PCs is upgradeable, so memory requirements matter less on PC.
17.What are the differences between CPU and GPU? CPU processes pure
information, while the graphics card translates information into images to
display on the screen.
18.What are Reach and HiDef? Reach = Limited graphics features. HiDef=
Highest level of graphics.
19.What is the basic network management involved in gaming? Online games
require lighter graphics and coding, as the network must support all players
viewing it.
20.How are TCP and UDP useful in games? TCP insures packets reach their
destination. UDP insures that either all or none of the data packets reach the
destination.
21.How are Web services useful in gaming? Helps to create accounts, contact
community, and present online only games, like MMORPGS

Lesson 3
1. Which graphics type is better for creating a game for mobile devices 2D or
3D? 2D
2. What are all the design elements that you can use for an FPS game? Clarity,
Colors, Simplicity, Compatiblity
3. What is a suitable UI concept for a sports game in the mobile platform? A
simple, uncongested one.

4. What is Direct X? Collection of APIs from Microsoft to handle high

performance multimedia.
5. What are the different APIs included in DirectX and for what purposes?
Direct3D, Direct2D, DirectSound3D, DirectPlay,DirectInput. Whatever the X is
replaced with is the purposed.
6. What are the display initialization requirements for a mobile game in the
educational genre? The minimum requirements that should be available for
your game to run smoothly on the chosen platform.
7. What are the possible display modes that you can select for an MMORPG
game? Windowed, Fullscreen, Borderless Window
8. What is the role of VSync in a game display? It controls the refresh rates of
your display.
9. What are the different audio and video compression techniques? Lossless,
Lossy

Lesson 4
1. What are the different aspects of a gameflow? Challenge, Pace, Scripted
events, Instinctive training areas, trial and error, instinctive prompt, player
vocabulary.
2. What is a game state? Definition of an object at a ceratain point in time in the
game.
3. What is the role of game states in managing gameflow? Doig what you want
with the game by changing ceartain elements.
4. How is scene hierarchy helpful in optimizing game states? Useful for
optimizing and rendering and also collision detection.
5. How do frame rate variations affect the player experience in a game? Varying
makes the game seem choppy and jagged.
6. What is a graphics pipeline? Method of drawing images on a screen through a
conversion of vector graphics.
7. What are the different methods available in the XNA Framework for a games
main loop? Executes the gameplay and draw the game components.
8. What are the different types of matrices that the XNA Framework 4.0 uses for
transformation? CreateLookAt, CreateWorld, CreateperspectiveFieldofView,
CreateTranlation
9. How can you form your game objects in XNA Framework? DrawUserPrimitives,
DrawUserIndexedPrimitives , and DrawPrimitives in the GraphicsDevice class
to render the primitive geometry
10.What is deformation of a game object? Changing the shape of an object after
an event.
11.How will you move your game objects? Provide the change position vertices
12.Why do you need to calculate the point distance between objects? To
account for the time it takes to move.

13.What is the importance of planes in transforming objects? Rotation, Scaling,

and translation all require planes
14.What is keyframe animation? Start and endpoint of an Animation
15.How does fps affect animation? When FPS is low, the illusion of movement is
lost.
16.How do you animate sprites? A group of images that change from one frame
to another.
17.How can you manage the appearance of textures? Using Filters
18.How is lighting handled in XNA 4.0? per-pixel lighting
19.How will you create shadows of your game objects in XNA 4.0? Shaders
20.How can you implement projections in XNA? Using them to scale objects and
make characters believe they can run around the game world.
21.What are the different primitive types available in XNA 4.0?
dRAWusERiNDEXEDpRIMITIVES.
22.What are physics-based animations? RAGDOLLS :D
23.How can you detect a collision between two game models using rectangular
bounding box? By having two sets of bounding boxes touch.
24.What is the concept behind the per-pixel collision detection method? When
the two rectangular areas intersect, every point gets the color of the pixels.
25.What is collision response? It is the resultant of two models colliding,
depending on the nature of the collision.

Lesson 5
1. What are the different activities involved in managing your games UI assets?
Loading Existing UI, Configuring Audio, Creating Menus, Creating the UI
2. How will you access the existing UI asset in your game? The content Pipeline.
3. How would you load a background image to your game in XNA 4.0? Overiding
the Load content method after adding the required assets.
4. What are the ways to associate audio, video, and keyboard inputs with the UI
assets of your game? Animate and add sound effects to button clicks.
5. What is the mechanism behind acquiring the input from the player in your
FPS game? Handling the input states
6. What are the different classes and structures available in XNA Framework 4.0
to handle player inputs from different input devices? GamePadButtons
Identifies whether buttons on the Xbox controller are pressed or released.
GamePadCapabilities Identifies the capabilities and type of Xbox controller
GamePadState Describes the current state of Xbox controller
GamePadThumbSticks Represents the position of left and right sticks
MouseState Represents the current state of the mouse Keyboardstate
Represents the state of keystrokes recorded by a keyboard
7. How will you create menus for your game in XNA 4.0? Create it as a drawable
game component.
8. How will you handle game saves at certain important milestones in your FPS
game? Using the Save Load UI

9. How will you program the UI for managing game saves and game loads in
XNA 4.0? Mapping the UI with a specifiecd state and programmatically
deciding the behavior.
10.How will you control the behavior of the UI using game states? Defining
various states.
11.What is the mechanism to track UI asset using game states in XNA 4.0? UI
access mechanisms.
12.How are UI access mechanisms helpful in games? They present a GUI, which
allows the player to control
13.How will you program the UI access mechanism for your game in XNA 4.0?
Create checkbox control.

Lesson 6
1. What is game tool creation? Creating game tools, such as assest conversion
tools, level editors, etc.
2. How will you program a speedometer to show the speed in a racing game?
Add the sprite, and configure it to move with the speed variable.
3. What is the role of AI in games? Produce illusion of intelligence on the part of
the NPCs
4. Why do you need to store and restore game data? Helps ensure that
variables in the game are stored.
5. What is the mechanism to store game data using XNA 4.0? Define game data
and serialize the game data into file.
6. What is the procedure to restore the saved user data in XNA 4.0? Create a
storage container object.
7. How will you manage the flow of a fantasy game using game states?
Initialize, Display Menu, Player Play, Player Lose, Gameover.