Games programming, good maths needed?

[x-ice]

Do i need to be above average or expectional at maths to be a good games programmer?

[Halsafar]

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....


Obviously, can you begin to picture the ammount of mathematics that go into the average game today.


To just make basic games then you really don't need much.

[x-ice]

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....


Obviously, can you begin to picture the ammount of mathematics that go into the average game today.


To just make basic games then you really don't need much.

its that i dont want to start games programming so that i will a brick wall when the maths gets to difficult

[Halsafar]

Really basic 2D games can be done without almost any math knowledge at all. The keyword is basic.

If you wish to program anything in 3D you will get hit with math the second you start. People may try and tell you differently but I'll be blunt, you need math and lots of it. Thankfully, there are many sites out there which will tutor your math needs and/or provide you with functionality which you can use and try to understand.

I aint sure how your high school systems work, but make sure you take Math A30, or at least the first level 30 math.

[Jacob Roman]

To be honest, I've never taken a Trigonometry, or Calculus course in my life, even to this day. And I've been working with 3D for 6 years. Seeing the mathematical stuff in my 3D game programming books may have looked greek at first, but when I started working with it, it began to make sense to me. Then after awhile, it became easy and understandable. And to this day, I'm still learning some cool things I can do with it, only this time using DirectX.

[Halsafar]

Yes, but if you had the background knowledge necessary you would be bounds ahead of where you are now,.

[Venom555]

So, it would be much better to get a huge math book covering everything on 3D math, going through all of it, before hitting a 3D programming book?

[Jacob Roman]

Not really, although it helps. A 3D game programming book will already help you with such things.

[x-ice]

Not really, although it helps. A 3D game programming book will already help you with such things.

Do you know of any good books for this?

I found this one, i'll check out the reviews now: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...311191-9285468 (Book.jpg)

OR
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...311191-9285468 (Book1.jpg)

[Jacob Roman]

I know an even better one. Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus by Andre LaMothe. It has lot's of math on just about everything you need. 1/Z buffering, perspective correct texture mapping, octrees, BSP's, bilinear and trilinear interpolation, mip mapping, 3D collision detection, alphablending, spot lights, shadows, reflection, light maps, gouraud shading, phong shading, etc etc etc. I can go on an on. This book will keep you busy. And there's lots of mathematical proofs in there that'll help ya pull this off.

[abcdefg]

In another 5 or 10 years you will need an insane mathematician amount of math to create an entire 3d engine from scratch. However most of it will be reusable such as the havok physics engine because no one wants to recreate this stuff everytime. The most basic math is algebra trig and vectors/matrices.

[Venom555]

I saw "Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus by Andre LaMothe" in the shop once, and it was truly HUGE, but it said on the book that you need to be able to program *extremely* well in C/C++ and if you're a C programmer, that there is enough C++ in that book to make you really uncomfortable, as using classes is more efficient...etc


Say if you only knew C and you had a C++ 3D programming book... would it be possible to manually translate everything into C, like Classes?