Game Programming and XNA in Software Engineering Education

Abstract

Game programming can help students gain practical experience with software engineering. Game programming covers a wide range of software engineering topicsincluding algorithms, data structures, team work, and software tools. Unfortunately, game programming usually involves many repetitive and time consuming tasks such as accessing hardware resources and managing game content. In this paper we present our experiences utilizing game programming for project courses. We discuss two conceptually different game project courses along with the results. The XNA framework relieves programmers from many of the tedious tasks mentioned, allowing them to develop a feature complete game and to gain experience with the process of software development. Students were so fascinated by the subject that they spent more time on the courses than required.

XQUEST used in software architecture education

“…Finally the paper describes seven design principles for using game segments in CS education based on lessons learned. Oliver Denninger and Jochen Schimmel present their experiences utilizing game programming for project courses based on XNA [30]. Game programming usually involves many repetitive and time consuming tasks such as accessing hardware resources and managing game content, but since XNA framework relieves programmers from many of the tedious tasks and allows them to develop a feature complete game and to gain experience with the process of software development, students were so fascinated by the subject that they prefer to spent more time on the courses.…”