The GD&D Laboratory is a custom-built facility that was specifically designed to meet the needs of the undergraduate and graduate programs in Game Design & Development. The laboratory is set out to meet the needs of game development teams of approximately 4-7 people, or a larger team using a multi-pod approach. The hardware in the lab is specifically available through our partnership with Alienware, a manufacturer of high-end PC systems specializing in the area of games and interactive application support.
Each station in the GD&D Lab is a fully-featured workstation with graphics hardware from nVidia or ATI, and processors from Intel or AMD. The lab specifically mixes and matches these vendors and hardware types to ensure a wide array of testing capabilities and project support capabilities. Each machine runs as its operating system Windows Vista Ultimate, and features Autodesk® 3dsMAX and Maya Unlimited software, the Adobe® Master Collection CS4 suite, Visual Studio Team Edition, XNA Game Studio, and a wide variety of tools, software, and visualization environments (everything from SVN clients to pinball construction kits).
In addition, the GD&D Lab features a lounge space that serves three distinct roles: as a place to crash in between classes or when students need “down time” in the midst of a development run, as a place to explore games and interactive software outside of the development environment and in its natural habitat (i.e. a casual atmosphere with a couch and a TV), and as a place where we often experiment with unusual hardware and interfaces (such as surface computing, wiimote re-rigging, and modifications to the ‘music game instrument’ input paradigms are among recent such projects). The lounge and the GD&D cage have available most modern consoles such as the Playstation 2 and 3, the Wii, additional XBOX 360 units, a Sega Genesis, a NES, and other associated gear, as well as an expanding library of titles for each. The lounge also features 1080p 46” televisions, additional Alienware computing equipment for video capture and generalized computing, and a series of both original and modified stand-up arcade cabinet units.
The IGM department is committed to replacing approximately 1/3rd of the equipment in the lab every year, and this timeframe is very much by design. The needs of the GD&D curriculum require that the lab offer the latest and greatest graphics hardware and processing architectures found in next-generation consumer equipment. Just as importantly, however, is having a number of machines that represent what the high-end consumer is likely to have in the commercial marketplace – and maintaining a testing environment in this sense is ideal as we continue to cascade hardware throughout this three-year cycle. Hardware that leaves the lab is then used for an additional two years to support special projects, configuration testing, and additional department support as needed.
Tutors and lab assistants are available to students in the GD&D lab on a rotating basis. There is always a lab assistant on duty, and IGM lab assistants are specifically selected based on their ability to provide responses and offer assistance with basic questions on both the hardware and software in the laboratory environment. Indeed, it has become a point of cultural pride that “labbies” are able to assist the generalized student population with issues, and are adept and bringing forward suggestions and comments for the continual improvement of our laboratory environments. In addition, graduate students that are employed by the department as tutors hold hours in the lab on a rotating basis, as their schedules allow.
In addition to all of the other things happening with the GD&D lab, the imaging system we using for the lab is wholly unique. At any time we can 'repush' the entire disk image of the machines and re-create the lab installs on each workstation in under an hour. This is possible due to a custom combination of software and drive tools, client/server scripting, networking backend, and ingenuity. In creating this lab to host our development work in the XNA environment, we published these techniques with Microsoft as a case example for other institutions to follow. Based on feedback we've received to date, this whitepaper has been useful at several institutions worldwide!
