Customer Reviews

Mathematics and Physics for Programmers (Charles River Media Game Development)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Kodicek tackles a persistent problem in computing. Many game programmers have either forgotten what physics and maths they learnt, or they never learnt much of it to being with. In programming, you can go a long ways without calculus. Essentially, you are dealing with discrete maths.

But as games have become more sophisticated, they attempt to emulate reality more accurately. In order to attract users who can key off their existing physical intuition. So the gaming industry needs programmers to be trained in the physics and maths. Of course, as the book shows, the physics barely ventures beyond first year undergraduate level dynamics, and the affiliated maths.

So to a physicist or mathematician, this book is not interesting. But for the rest of you, the pseudocode methods should be understandable. And you can translate them into whatever language you work in.

The CD is strictly optional. A good enough programmer can dispense with it.

I took physics, linear algebra, and calculus when I was in college.

Unfortunately, upon getting my IT job developing business applications, I did not have much use for them and when I became interested in game development, I realized that I had forgotten a great deal of information that I learned while I was in school.

I did have my linear algebra and calculus text book, but I misplaced (or sold) my physics book. I first looked online for quick tutorials, but a lot of tutorials left a lot to be desired.

This book briefly reviews the necessary basics which quickly returned to me and later applies them 2d and 3d scenarios.

I especially like the language agnostic approach the author has taken with the pseudocode in the book. The introduction states that no knowledge is assumed from the reader as each following chapter builds on a previous one. While, so far that statement has held true, I do wonder if a reader with absolutely no knowledge linear algebra, trig, calculus, and physics will fully grasp what the author is saying. Nevertheless, I do not see that as a negative since the book would be prohibitively huge it were anymore detailed.

The glossary is a nice inclusion and so far has been thorough enough to find everything what I was looking for.

I am certainly glad that I lost my physics book. Otherwise, I would not have this fine book.

I picked this book after reading lots of reviews. I wanted a book that covered game physics and could help me reconnect to the math I was using on the job. But this book, while covering every topic I was interested in does a very poor job of explaining what is going on. The author often throws out a complex equation with no explanation of the terms and transforms the equation into a seemingly different variation with all new terms and zero effort to tie them together. The code is too agnostic, and not useful for reading or using. I am back at amazon looking for a better book, this one is to simple for someone versed in the math and lacks the explanations needed to help someone get back up to speed on the subjects. If you had never had a college physics course or taken calculus you would not be able to get anything out of this book at all.

I have almost all the books on game math and physics.
and besides andre la mothe's book this book comes across as a really friendly approach to learning the math.I've had to look at dry math books to cover many things other's leave out which has been thankfully included in this book.
The psuedo code makes things sit in perspective as well.
thank you for doing such a good job.

i was hoping the book went a little more indepth with InverseKinematics as it mearly glossed over it.

b

According to the introduction of this book it was designed because "increasingly people are coming into programming from backgrounds other than math. Artists and musicians; authors and screenwriters; businesspeople and teachers all find themselves drifting into the "new media" as a useful additional tool to their trade... So this book tries to address these problems directly by going right back to the fundamentals."

Unfortunately, I found that this book failed to be a good resource for people who do not have an strong background in math. It seems to be a good refresher for people who have a strong math background and are looking for a refresher. The reason being the author is not able to explain math concepts using simple language in a way that can be easily understood by the audiences he claims to be trying to serve. As other reviewers have noted, the author also often includes complex equations and transformations with little explanation.

I found that when reading this book I often needed to turn to wikipedia or other online resources to understand the concepts being covered. Those other resources usually provided much clearer explanations of these key concepts - using language, and examples that were easy to understand for people without background in math.

If you have a strong background in math and already understand the lingo used by mathematicians then this book is for you. if you are an artist, writer, musician with little background in math look elsewhere (and let me know if you find a good one).

The book covers a lot of topics, all very well explained. The only bad thing is the pseudocode, is very complicated to understand (the author gave strange names to the variables, and is not easy to follow)

I originally purchased this book as reference material for building a 3D physics engine. And while this book certainly had material relevant for doing so, I probably would have appreciated a little more detail on the subject. That's not to say that this isn't a useful book, it certainly is... But it covers a vast range of topics, from 2D (and some 3D) physics to AI path finding.

Overall, while it is an excellent reference, it was not the one-stop source I was hoping it to be, and wound up having to reference other online articles to supplement what I found here.

Still worth buying, and I'm sure it will see a lot of use in the future.

The the bigger mathematics coverage is on the beginning chapters; in the last ones its very shallow, there is little explanations on the programmings details.

A friend pointed me to this book and I couldn't be more pleased. This is a great overall look at basic math concepts used in games. I'm always forgetting approaches and Kodicek explains things extremely well.