UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS 2017/2018
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF APPLIED
COMPUTING
BAC 4101 COMPUTER GAMING ENGINE ARCHITECTURE
FULL TIME/PART TIME
DATE: DECEMBER, 2017 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question One & ANY OTHER TWO questions.
QUESTION ONE [30 MARKS]
a) Define the following terms as used in game engine architecture:
i. Game [2 Marks]
ii. Asset conditioning pipeline [2 Marks]
iii. DeltaTime [2 Marks]
b) A game engine can share many parts and functionalities with a game. Describe what
separates a game from a game engine and what makes a game engine different from
just a game. [6 Marks]
c) Differentiate between Statistical and Instrumenting profiling tools [4 Marks]
d) How can we make a game loop to be locked at 30 FPS in Unity game engine or any
other game engine of your choice. [3 Marks]
e) Your junior game developer has designed a game and as you were testing the game
you noted that the game state updates systematically starts lagging behind in the game
loop (i.e., updates are taking longer than the target frame rate). What could you
possibly advice the junior developer to do to rectify the problem. [7 Marks]
f) Suppose you are adding a new kind of entity (e.g. a 3D cube/sphere/polygon) to a
game using an entity system, such as the one provided in Unity. Explain roughly the
major steps that you would follow to place your entity within the 3D system.
[4 Marks]
QUESTION TWO (20 MARKS)
a) State any three game engines available in the market. [3 Marks]
b) Draw A · U using the diagram in question one (d), given that |U| = 1. Hint: U is a
unit vector [3 Marks]
c) Explain the following subsystems in a game runtime engine:
i. Human Interface Devices [2 Marks]
ii. Resources manager [2 Marks]
iii. Rendering engine [2 Marks]
d) Briefly describe the two basic kinds of error conditions in a game engine.
[4 Marks]
e) Discuss the two primary reasons why coding standards exist in game development.
[4 Marks]
QUESTION THREE (20 MARKS)
a) Describe what a profiler tool is and its purpose as used in game design.
[2 Marks]
b) Game studios are usually composed of five basic disciplines which the game
development team will fall under. Explain the basic disciplines. [10 Marks]
c) Differentiate between Memory Leak and Memory Corruption [4 Marks]
d) Define the following terms as used in Unity game studio [4 Marks]
i. Project
ii. Screen
iii. Main camera
iv. Rigid body
QUESTION FOUR (20 MARKS)
a) Version control is crucial whenever software (including games) is developed by a
team of multiple engineers. Describe four reasons why version control is an important
tool of trade in game design and development. [8 Marks]
b) List any four common source/version control systems available in the market and are
used by game developers. [4 Marks]
c) When the same type of problem arises over and over, and many different programmers
employ a very similar solution to that problem, we say that a design pattern has arisen.
In object-oriented programming, a number of common design patterns have been
identified and described by various authors. Describe any Three common generalpurpose design patterns. [6 Marks]
