Arm has had a long association with mobile gaming, ever since Nokia launched the iconic Snake game on its Arm-powered 6110 handset back in 1997. Incidentally, the Nokia 6110 was the very first GSM phone to use an Arm processor (ARM7).
From these beginnings, the mobile gaming industry now generates more than $40 billion in annual revenues globally, and accounts for half of the worldwide digital games market. [1]
Arm continues to play an important part in this market. With a vast ecosystem geared towards producing high performance and low energy devices, Arm IP and Mali graphics processors are at the heart of innovation in the mobile gaming space.
Understandably, the demand for qualified game developers and graphics specialists is growing at an exponential rate. Universities are increasingly under pressure to meet this growth by providing software engineers with the skills required to meet industry demand. Similarly, professionals already engaged in the industry are continuously challenged to keep up with the latest technological developments.
In response to these pressures, in 2016 the Arm University Program created the Graphics and Mobile Gaming Education Kit, available free of charge to university educators worldwide. The Kit comprises full teaching materials including lecture slides with notes, lab manuals with solutions, and quizzes with answers. These teaching materials were carefully designed to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills to build highly interactive mobile-first video games.
The success of these teaching materials generated calls from aspiring game developers outside universities to create the Graphics and Mobile Gaming Online Course. This mission fits perfectly with that of Arm Education Media, a publishing operation within Arm created to produce highly interactive online courses and textbooks targeted at all learners.
Today, the Graphics and Mobile Gaming Online Course is available for individual and institutional subscription and purchase. With a strong self-study focus, the eleven-module course includes lecture slides with notes, quizzes, labs and lab videos which ease the learner through the intricacies of graphics and 3D mobile game development . The course could be used by educators who wish to ‘flip’ their classrooms, students of graphics and mobile gaming, and aspiring game developers from all walks of life.
In clear and concise language, this course covers the latest graphics and game design technologies on mobile devices, breaking down concepts into easy-to-understand theory, which is reinforced via the accompanying labs and quizzes. Users can be confident that even complex programming and design concepts will be understood.
With a specific focus on Mali GPU technology, the course enables students to work with cutting edge graphical and virtual reality rendering techniques, optimized for Arm-based devices.
The course introduces Chukong Technologies' popular Cocos2d-x game engine, which is both open source and cross platform. Cocos2d-x is a well-respected platform for teaching game engine and graphics processing, with a codebase that can be ported to multiple devices and operating systems.
Students and professionals taking the Graphics and Mobile Gaming online course will gain a greater understanding of graphics programming and games design, learn how to manage workflows and hone their project management skills in this area.
The course aims to equip students with the skills needed to create their own 3D games on mobile devices through the rigorous teaching of graphics and gaming fundamentals and hands-on practice using professional graphics API and game engines.
Basic understanding of C++/Java programming
The course starts with the fundamentals of 3D graphics and how Arm Mali GPUs are designed to process graphical data with a low-power requirement. It then introduces OpenGL ES as a programming API to process graphics on mobile devices, while concepts such as shader programming, geometry processing, texturing and lighting are illustrated and practiced. Following that, the game engine is introduced as a high-level tool to develop real games, through which students will learn how to create 3D sprites, sound and animation, user interaction and physics. In addition to the above, the course demonstrates how to use different programming techniques to optimize performance, as well as advanced topics such as virtual reality.
Individuals can subscribe to this and other Arm Education Media online courses
For institutional subscriptions, please contact the ARM Education Media team at edumedia@arm.com.
[1] SuperData: Mobile games hit $40.6 billion in 2016, matching world box office number