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My Game Console Design Course

Name:	Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze
Date Posted:	Jan 06, 2007
Rating:	4.7 out of 5
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Blog post

I haven't blogged her in a long time and for good reason. Over the past 2 months I've been teach a course I made that took over 7 months to make. Things are going really good and I figured I would just say a little blurb about it. Who knows maybe some of you are interested in it. Also if you would like to join its 20% off right now for the holidays (I think that ends really soon).

Now I know most of you are here for programming only, but there may be some of you who are electronic geeks as well. I really enjoy both aspects of the discipline. Let me just put up a link and some of the marketing junk here. Hopefully soon I'll get back to coding Torque. I picked up TGB during the creation of the course so maybe I can hop on that bandwagon :)

Heres the course description if interested......

Silicon Valley, USA, November 2006 - World's First Online Video Game Console Development Course

Nurve Networks LLC and Game Institute have teamed up to take online game developement training to the next level with world's first course on the technology and development of gaming hardware and consoles. Game programming is great fun and extremely rewarding, but unfortunately there is a whole world of game development that most people never get to experience anymore -- hardware design. In the 70's and 80's a "game developer" not only designed the game itself, wrote the code, and made the art, but he or she often designed the hardware as well! This lost art is what this course is all about: learning how to design, build, and modify your own game consoles from scratch.

"To develop a game for a console that you not only designed, but also hand-built with your own soldering iron, is one of the most enriching learning experiences you will ever have as a game developer or software engineer. There is just nothing that can get you closer to the root layer or give you that sense of total ownership and mastery of a subject", says course creator Andre' LaMothe.

This Game Institute exclusive online course is the first and only one of its kind offered anywhere in the world. The course was developed by best selling game developement author Andre' LaMothe and NASA Ames Research Center's Josh Hintze. Nowhere else will you learn the concepts and skills required to create your own video game console (and then build your own games for it!) in such an easily accessible setting.

In addition to the course's online content, students receive a complete hardware kit containing over 100+ components, including items such as: pre-manufactured printed circuit board, microcontrollers, "The Black Art of Video Game Console Design" by Andre LaMothe, soldering iron, digital multimeter, Nintendo gamepad controller, resistors, capacitors, LEDs, and much more!

For more information and to enroll in the course visit Game Institute at:

www.gameinstitute.com/courses.php?coursedisplay=121

And of course the obligatory picture.........this is what you end up making.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	01/06/07 - My Game Console Design Course 11/27/05 - Plan for Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze 10/19/05 - Plan for Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze

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Bob (Jan 06, 2007 at 06:31 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Cool! Good luck with the class. I've always loved Andre's game console hardware. I've debated buying the XGS you have shown, but I think i'm gonna go with his new console, based on parallax's propeller chip; due to the fact that the propeller is totally awesome and the spin language is incredibly powerful.
Edited on Jan 06, 2007 07:32 GMT

Josef Rogovsky (Jan 06, 2007 at 08:30 GMT)

Hi Josh,

I'm actually registered for the class but I've been too busy to use any of my time blocks; I plan to start in a few weeks.

I'm glad to hear that things are going well.

Has there been any discussion on a follow-up course? Maybe one involving the XGS2?

Andy Hawkins (Jan 06, 2007 at 10:35 GMT)

This is Super Cool!!!! I gotta do this course.

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Jan 06, 2007 at 19:15 GMT)

@Bob - Yes the Hydra is pretty cool with its multi-core processor. There are a lot of things you can do with it and the buzz has been pretty good. Since it does have the SPIN language people can get things going fast without having to learn all the nitty gritty details of video generation and SX assembly.

@Josef - Awesome. I can't wait to see you in class. A lot of students have done some pretty interesting things on there on. I look forward to seeing you.

@Andy - I hope to see you there. Let me know if you have any questions.

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Jan 06, 2007 at 19:15 GMT)

Edited on Jan 06, 2007 19:16 GMT

David Higgins (Jan 06, 2007 at 19:53 GMT) Resource Rating: 4

This just looks too awesome, and it seems to be fairly priced too for what you get in the end -- even without the holiday discount.

Are these courses "online" or do you actually have to goto the institute for the 12 week period?

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Jan 06, 2007 at 20:56 GMT)

They are entirely online. You will be shipped all of the components listed on the site plus more, and a CD of the course content....although you can also watch the lectures online.

We hold a 1 hour live chat session with Andre and I twice a week to answer questions. Normally we go through slides if there are no questions.

I have just as fun teaching it as others have taking it. Somebody interfaced a keyboard the other day to the game console.
Edited on Jan 06, 2007 20:57 GMT

Gary Preston (Jan 07, 2007 at 01:16 GMT)

Funny coincidence, we were chatting on IRC earlier today about the propeller chip which is used in the Hydra. Opened this blog and thought to myself, that PCB looks remarkably familiar :)

The Pico is good fun to build, I built one on a breadboard in early 2006. Although I have to say it looks much nicer in your photo on the PCB :)

Here's an early photo of it, minus oscillator which I'd put back in the XGS :)

Edited on Jan 07, 2007 01:16 GMT

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Jan 07, 2007 at 01:33 GMT)

Nice big bread board. It puts to shame my three that i have tabbed together.

Morrie (Jan 07, 2007 at 02:03 GMT)

I saw alot of different courses on your web site; I was thinking maybe you could offer them in a CD purchase or make the available for purchase through GG. I like the physics one it was pretty interesting. If I could purchase the courses in CD form I would buy them so I could go though them when I have time. There are alot of interesting courses I would like to have on your website.

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Jan 07, 2007 at 02:17 GMT)

Its not my website unfortunately :) I'm just one of the many instructors. I do believe that with every class you get the CD. The timeblocks thing is access to the instructors and live chats, forums, etc. I know with our class everybody gets a CD with the course materials and you have 1 year to use the timeblocks before they go away.

Morrie (Jan 07, 2007 at 03:13 GMT)

You should also teach a course for system today; An upgrade kit for example. I would rather build something similar to the Xbox360 or even the game cube. Also the system that is built: will it work with TGE, TSE, and other 3d engines.

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Jan 07, 2007 at 04:03 GMT)

No, thats not the point of this course at all. If you want to build something simular to the XBOX 360 I suggest going to NewEgg.com and buying an top of the line ATI graphics card, Dual Core Pentium, Gig of ram.

The thing is....anybody can do that, but you'll never know how everything works. Its way to complicated now, but if you start with the basics you can learn a lot and build up. Its like people who come to these forums and say....I'm going to build an MMORPG with 1 million players...can somebody tell me how to do this? So start small is all were trying to do. If you can master this, then we can talk about future stuff.

David Higgins (Jan 07, 2007 at 04:03 GMT) Resource Rating: 4

@Morrie,

I think your asking for a bit much there -- besides, the xbox 360 is just a modified pc design, it uses USB for it's controllers, it has regular EIDE hard drives, it uses a standard Intel CPU and standard RAM (afaik). The only real noteable difference between the 360 and a desktop pc is the operating system, which is custom.

With a little effort and some well spent time, anyone could easily make there own console with standard pc hardware and a custom OS -- the OS doesn't even really need to be custom, it could be a derivitate of any public domain/opensource/free OS such as Linux with modified themes and pre-configured controller inputs with a nice program that runs a GUI at startup -- you can even use some of the existing resources on the net to change the default startup appearance and, if you select a good motherboard, you can even flash the bios and modify the boards initial startup (change the startup logo from say "IBM" or "Dell" to "My Custom Console" for example -- and disable the DOS-style print outs).

The stuff in the course mentioned here, is more for electronic enthusiasts, where you actually have to put things together -- something like the xbox would be more for someone interested in things like case modifications as the majority of the xbox is just a custom case and custom OS, the hardware is all pretty standard -- including the controllers (PS2 and Xbox and GameCube controllers, on the inside, all look the same, with few differences, other then position of things)

Tom Bampton (Jan 07, 2007 at 04:39 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I tried to post yesterday but the site ate my post...

I think that this course is an awesome idea. Far too many programmers these days know nothing of the hardware they code for or the compilers they use. I think that you can't really get past being an average programmer without knowing exactly what the compiler does with the code you write and how the CPU etc works.

This course looks like it goes a very long way towards getting that knowledge in an accessible way - not just for the small systems built in the class, but for mainstream development too.

I am actually glad that the site ate my post yesterday as Morrie's post is indicative of someone who I think would benefit greatly from this course and it illustrates my point nicely.

T.

Morrie (Jan 07, 2007 at 05:22 GMT)

No; I think you confused my question or maybe I worded it wrong. If I buy the kit will I be able to run games I make in TGE and TSE. The reason I ask this is because both use DirectX and TSE has shaders and other stuff in it.

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Jan 07, 2007 at 05:23 GMT)

@Morrie - no this is an extremely simple processor. Have a look at www.xgamestation.com for an idea of what kind of games you can make. There is no operating system so hence no Torque unfortanetly. :)

Tom Bampton (Jan 07, 2007 at 05:28 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Torque also needs significantly more then 136 bytes of RAM ;-)

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Jan 07, 2007 at 05:29 GMT)

LOL.....I don't know Tom. I've seen that you are a Wiz at Torque. I'm sure you can make something happen.

Tom Bampton (Jan 07, 2007 at 05:31 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Well, I was just pondering Torque MCU Edition ... >:)

Bob (Jan 08, 2007 at 08:25 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Hahaha, Torque MCU.... now that would be awesome! *Dreams on....*

Josef Rogovsky (Feb 05, 2007 at 02:51 GMT)

Hey Josh,

I have a question about the GI course but I'm not sure where the best place would be to ask it.

Can I post the question here? Should I post it at Andre's forums? I'm not ready to begin the course so I don't want to cash in a time block just to be able to post at the GI forums.

It's not a question about any of the lesson content specifically, just about the study approach I should take.

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Feb 05, 2007 at 03:03 GMT)

Just email me at gimp3695 @ hotmail dot com

Josef Rogovsky (Feb 05, 2007 at 05:07 GMT)

Thanks for responding so quickly. I've sent you an email.

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