BSc (Hons) Games Design and Production with Foundation Year Bachelor's degree at the University of Salford

Helps you to become more familiar and confident with technology. Involves learning creative software and photography skills, exploring a creative subject of your choice and developing essential time management and research skills.

Enables you to examine the creative and professional practice of others as a way of reflecting on your own practice. Create a range of outcomes to build a dedicated portfolio and learn about major influences in art and design.

Provides a foundation in computer coding within the context of digital art creation.

Allows you to bring together all your prior learning from the previous modules. Give you the opportunity to propose and create your own brief based on a theme, topic, or issue that you are passionate about. Your work will be exhibited in the Salford School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology's end of year Degree Show.

Allows you to explore the creative industries and its career opportunities. Learn about a range of subjects including responsible design and future trends within your chosen area of art and design. Build on technical skills to produce a creative publication.

Receive a solid introduction to the foundations of computer programming. Study code structures and principles, prototype, test and bug fix. Investigate flexible configurable systems and receive an introduction to games engines.

Follow a Bauhaus model engaging with a number of creative processes and practices. Develop independent creative capabilities, learn about portraiture and life drawing, product and vehicle design, and get hands on in the workshop building physical pieces.

Learn the fundamentals of games design. Study the theory of play, rules and mechanic. Investigate design methods and process, conceptualise and build board game prototypes, before testing and polishing towards a professional product.

Continuation of the visual arts module engaging the same design methods and traditional arts practices. Covers photographic theory, composition, digital image theory, image retouching, pixel and vector art, digital painting, graphical layout and an introduction to 3D modelling.

Two strands: study of technologies from the past, the present, and in the future to equip you with foundation knowledge required by a creative digital practitioner. Conceptualise and build interactive prototypes in maker space, using technologies such as Raspberry Pi, Arduino and rudimentary Processing.

Work in production teams to build your first 2D digital game. Engage with industry methods within an agile framework, to conceptualise, design, prototype and test your ideas.

Learn the theory of storytelling and narrative and apply this knowledge through creative practice to a digital artifact. Understand narrative from a cultural perspective covering themes including story structures, the hero's journey, characterisation, environmental storytelling, narrative and emergent technologies, immersion and interactivity.

Echo the group-based production modules, utilise the same processes and pipelines, but step up a level in complexity and edge closer to a commercial standard. Themes typically covered include third person controllers, controlling game agent's animations, combat mechanics, conversational systems, game cinematic components, open landscapes, advanced game mechanics and level design.

Introduced to the processes and skills required to design, develop and deploy 3D virtual games environments. Learn to employ traditional design processes to conceive and plan for construction of modular components. Focus on construction of well crafted, low detail, optimised 3D topology and develop fundamental 3D modelling and texturing skills.

Continues to develop knowledge learned in the first semester of the second year. Build understanding of more complex underlying programming paradigms. Topics covered typically include tool construction, advanced code systems, flocking, pathfinding, obstacle avoidance, Open GL Shaders, networking for online gaming, sound/audio programming, quality assurance and business management.

Learn to conceive, design, develop and animate 3D characters for real-time and pre-rendered applications. Consider persona and narrative as well as aesthetic and proportion. Learn to apply traditional art and design methods. Focus on creation of elegant topology and form, sculpting low polygon organic geometry and moving towards more complex sculptural tools.

Continues the work undertaken within Final Project Proposal and Prototyping, moving to a phase of full-scale production. Drive these projects as close to an industry standard as possible. Apply a full spectrum of production methods and processes. At this point you will have identified your areas of expertise and will contribute to multiple roles within your team.

Focus on the realities of finding meaningful employment in the digital creative industries. Investigate the personas of practicing professionals and company structures. Build a structured plan to develop your capabilities and core competencies. Develop a professional persona and learn how to best communicate it. Learn to strategically plan a pathway into employment.

Opportunity to develop a purely written or practice-based dissertation. Process has proved invaluable in supporting students to find their first employment opportunities. Allows you to build a contemporary area of expertise. Equips students with necessary academic skills required to progress to master's degree or PhD. Elements typically covered include practise based research, qualitative and quantitative research, critical evaluation and advanced academic writing.