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Essential Math for Games Programmers

essentialmath.com

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Re: Essential Math for Games Programmers

#11

Post by blt »

sbarg wrote: post #8
ixtli wrote: post #3

Am I the only one who can't stand people trying to deliver technical information via power point slides?

Not at all. Slides are to support a talk. I find most of them fairly useless without the speaker audio/video.

The quality of a talk is probably inversely proportional to the "stand-alone-ability" of the slides. If you can get all the information from the slides they're way too dense. The best lecturers use the slides for pictures and as an outline, but deliver most of the information through speech.

Re: Essential Math for Games Programmers

#12

Post by dkarapetyan »

dfan wrote: post #10

It would be nice if this were in some sort of curriculum order. It was disconcerting to see that the first topic was Grassman [sic] Algebra. Honestly, based on my 20+ years in game development, the one essential piece of math I wish all game programmers had in their toolbox is to know basic linear algebra backwards and forwards.

I'd argue that the Grassmann algebra is simpler than linear algebra. Deriving the determinant from its definition makes very little sense to me even today but it falls out pretty naturally from the definition of wedge product, i.e. the coefficient of the highest degree wedge product. Also, a lot of the operations in geometric algebra have pretty much direct geometric analogs whereas in linear algebra you have to jump through some hoops to figure out what the formulas mean geometrically.

Re: Essential Math for Games Programmers

#13

Post by mieko »

A few years ago, the Wolfire team (AKA, the Humble Bundle originators), put together a great set of articles on linear algebra as it applies to game development. I think it's one of the most plainly-written and practical guides out there. I still mentally picture the diagrams when I've been out of the loop for a bit.

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game-deve...

Re: Essential Math for Games Programmers

#14

Post by ivansavz »

dfan wrote: post #10

It would be nice if this were in some sort of curriculum order. It was disconcerting to see that the first topic was Grassman [sic] Algebra. Honestly, based on my 20+ years in game development, the one essential piece of math I wish all game programmers had in their toolbox is to know basic linear algebra backwards and forwards.

> basic linear algebra backwards and forwards

On that note, here's a short tutorials about linear algebra on fast forward: http://minireference.com/static/tutorials/linear_algebra_in_...

It's aimed at students who are in a rush so it doesn't cover too many applications (the cool parts of LA), but the essential ideas are there.

Re: Essential Math for Games Programmers

#15

Post by leeoniya »

dfan wrote: post #10

It would be nice if this were in some sort of curriculum order. It was disconcerting to see that the first topic was Grassman [sic] Algebra. Honestly, based on my 20+ years in game development, the one essential piece of math I wish all game programmers had in their toolbox is to know basic linear algebra backwards and forwards.

speaking of linear algebra, i just ran into this oddity: manual affine matrix calc differs from what css-transform computes. why?

http://jsfiddle.net/dfqhw64q/6/

Re: Essential Math for Games Programmers

#16

Post by chii »

general_failure wrote: post #6
andywood wrote: post #2

Don't panic. The page is titled "Essential...", but unless you're beginning a new AAA engine by yourself, much of this laundry list is more like "Interesting"

Indeed. All this is hardly essential.

but knowing it makes you a more versatile developer.

Re: Essential Math for Games Programmers

#18

Post by killertypo »

mieko wrote: post #13

A few years ago, the Wolfire team (AKA, the Humble Bundle originators), put together a great set of articles on linear algebra as it applies to game development. I think it's one of the most plainly-written and practical guides out there. I still mentally picture the diagrams when I've been out of the loop for a bit. http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game-deve...

this is absolutely wonderful, as someone who dabbles in gamedev on the side this is immensely useful (just like gameprogrammingpatterns.com).

I love math, it is my favorite subject (numbers are beautiful) but sometimes I don't know the concepts for the math I am trying to apply, this definitely helps fill in some gaps.

Re: Essential Math for Games Programmers

#19

Post by otikik »

sbarg wrote: post #8
ixtli wrote: post #3

Am I the only one who can't stand people trying to deliver technical information via power point slides?

Not at all. Slides are to support a talk. I find most of them fairly useless without the speaker audio/video.

I think slides should be useless without the speaker. If I don't need the speaker to understand the talk, then it was not a good talk.
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