Beginning Math and Physics for Game Programmers

by Wendy Stahler

Book Overview

Whether you're a hobbyist or a budding game design pro, your objective is probably the same: To create the coolest games possible using today's increasingly sophisticated technology. To do that,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0536166919
• ISBN13: 9780536166913
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Pearson Custom Publishing
• Length: 475 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Introduction to Game Programming Math

This book is, in my opinion, the essential read for anyone who wishes to start working with game programming. The explanations of concepts and mathematical principles are in plain English and often complimented with an example. While often many game programming books dive too deeply and quickly into technical or mathematical concepts this book attempts all time to keep the reader informed and strives to make the content as accessible as possible. Also this book is a great reference for formula and maths review for even the seasoned programmer.

some human errors, but priceless theory review!

I had read some of the reviews for this book and they focus on parts where almost all books have human errors, code or math examples, but the explaination of the theory is very well reviewed. This book is very well organized and explains very well the topics. This book is a very good book for begginers on games physics and math, its not a book for learning math, physics or programming, and by reading the reviews of the book you'll see what I meant, seems a lot of people misundestood the book title.

Good for beginners,

Although I'm not a game designer, I picked this up because I think it's important to read books outside my everyday work. I'm glad I did! This excellent book brings together a lot of material in just over 400 pages, and the author deserves a lot of credit for making the subject matter easy to understand without talking down to the reader. The author does a good job covering the subject matter, although the shortness of the book prevents an in-depth treatment of the dense subjects. It is a good primer for any aspiring game programmer.The book is split largely along subject lines: math first, physics second, it being impossible to program the physics of an object if the math is not understood. One of my favorite things was included in this book: chapter exercises, along with the answers. I get a lot more out of a book when I can do problems and check on my answers. I found the software on the cd useful, despite not being a C++ programmer, it helped me concretely visualize what happens when you use certain techniques.This book will be useful for a long time to come, because the math and physics discussed are the fundamental building blocks behind realistic game play. I will keep this book on my reference shelf for the math alone, it is a good refresher for basic algebra, trig, and calculus. Word of advice: if you don't understand this book, game programming is not for you.

Genius reviewer?

The previous reviewer on this book must be a genius. I meen, he could even read the title, "Advanced C++ and Code Optimization." Oh, wait, that's not what it says, it says "Beginning Math and Physics for Game Programmers." As an AI programmer for the last 10 years who came into the industry without any college level courses, I never studied math and physics in school, and most books that that claim to be physics books for game programmers read like calculas text books. I was very pleased to find this book assumed nothing about a persons level of math in a schooling environment, an explained in very good detail how to start learning a new area of programming. The previous reviewer asks "why would game programmers need a book about basic math and physics?" Well maybee they are'nt game programmers yet? "It's not just the code, her math is just as bad. She uses degrees instead of just sticking to radians." Most people that are just starting out don't understand radians or the need for them. That's why it is simplified using degrees. Again, the key word here is "Beginning." This book is not geared towards people who are industry level programmers. If you want a book where you can steal code out of to use in your game, search the internet, there is plenty of free code out there. By the way, if game programmers don't need beginning physics and math, and you're such an awsome game programmer, why did YOU by the book?