Computer Science 4
Java for Video Games

Homework 1
Making a Course Webpage

50 points, due 9pm January 24, 2006

Your course webpage is a portfolio for your course work. By the end of the semester, any outsider (which could include future employers) should be able to go to your webpage and see all of the results of your hard work. They should also be able to play some video games you have written. Now we are just going to get started with the shell of a webpage. A sample page is located here.


Your website must contain the following webpages

  1. Introductory page containing
  2. Homeworks page containing
  3. Project page containing

After creating your website, your first homework assignment is to read and respond to the handout given out in class "What Players Want" that represents Chapter 1 from the book Game Design: Theory and Practice by R. Rouse. This reading describes some distinctions between good and bad games. After reading it, you should create a web page that describes your favorite and least favorite video games (past or present) and notes which features each had that made it appealing or unappealing to you. Finally, you should link this page to your overall website.

Once you finish making your web site, post a message to the class discussion board telling people about it and include a link to it. Extra credit will be given for those students that respond to other students favorite and least favorite games (i.e., discuss the topic on the bulletin board).

How to

To create the content for your website, you can use a program specifically designed to edit web pages (like Dreamweaver or Frontpage), the editor that comes with your browser, or a standard modern word processor. Any of these editors allow you write text or import images without worrying about the actual format used on the web. Even though it is not necessary for this assignment, if you would like to learn more about the hypertext markup language, HTML, you can look at a these sites:

For more help on creating a web page, OIT has created a Duke-specific tutorial online here (although it is DreamWeaver specific, it contains a lot of generically useful instructions).

Once you have created a website, you will need to link it into the web. To do that, you need to save your files into a specific folder on the Duke University computer system (called acpub). To transfer work from your computer to acpub, use the following instructions (note, directory and folder are synonymous and can be used interchangeably):

  1. Open up your SSH Secure Shell -> Secure File Transfer Client.
    This program is freely available for Duke students
  2. Select File -> Quick Connect.
  3. For the Host Name to connect to, enter
  4. For the User Name put in your NetID.
  5. Put in your password when prompted.
  6. On the right side will be your files on your Duke account, and on the left side are files on your personal computer. Find the directory public_html in your Duke account.
  7. Double click on the public_html directory.
  8. Now find index.html on your local computer.
  9. Click and drag index.html to your Duke account to copy the file into your public_html directory.
  10. If you've done everything correctly, you should be able to go to your web address, which is (where you replace your_login with your actual username) and see the web page you just created.

Be sure to start early enough to ask for help if you get stuck!