

Essential Math for Games Programmers - th0ma5
http://www.essentialmath.com/tutorial.htm

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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...](http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game-developers-
part-1/)

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killertypo
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.

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andywood
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"

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general_failure
Indeed. All this is hardly essential.

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chii
but knowing it makes you a more versatile developer.

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dfan
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.

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ivan_ah
> _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_...](http://minireference.com/static/tutorials/linear_algebra_in_4_pages.pdf)

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.

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

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

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blt
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.

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Shivetya
I am going to reveal a bit of ignorance here. I code simply because I am
horrid at math and since my work only entails business math I rarely have to
even search for good examples. Balancing books, invoicing, etc, doesn't seem
to stretch my math skills.

So which areas are still math intensive outside of engineering related work?

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dkarapetyan
Most people have a wrong conception of what math means. Math encompasses large
parts of pretty much any engineering discipline including programming. At the
end of the day the foundations of programming are boolean logic, turing
machines, lambda calculus, etc. Those are all technically math so when you say
you're horrid at math and that's why you code that doesn't really make any
sense.

More generally, using any kind of analytical approach to solve problems is
math.

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tremendo
Another resource, titled "Coding Math", but covers such topics as tweening,
easing, ballistics…:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/codingmath/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/codingmath/videos)

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ehtd
I have developed some games on my own and these math resources are far more
than essential.

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CmonDev
How come is it essential if I don't really need most of that to build games
these days? Correct title: "Math that might be useful for 2d+3d games with
custom engines".

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Drakim
Even if all development moves over to a selection of a few engines (which
won't happen), you'd still have to have people who make the engines, and they
don't pop out of nowhere.

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chii
there's a very long list of videos on youtube on maths for game devs:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKCF8A3XGxQ&list=PLW3Zl3wyJw...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKCF8A3XGxQ&list=PLW3Zl3wyJwWOpdhYedlD-
yCB7WQoHf-My&channel=BSVino)

i watched some of it - quite educational, albeit a bit dry.

