Fundamentals of Math and Physics for Game Programmers |  | Author: Wendy Stahler
Publisher: Prentice Hall
List Price: $92.33
Buy New: $49.98
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 811555
Media: Paperback
Pages: 576
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0131687425
Dewey Decimal Number: 790
EAN: 9780131687424
ASIN: 0131687425
Publication Date: August 7, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Fundamentals of Math and Physics for Game Programmers teaches the fundamental math and physics concepts, principles, and formulas that are crucial for developing successful games. Covers topics such as trigonometry snippets, vector and matrix operations, transformations, momentum and collisions, and 1D/2D/3D motion. Concepts are taught in a step-by-step format in order to improve the level of game development. Includes case studies and hands-on projects allowing students to experience the application of essential concepts. End-or-chapter review exercises are provided for additional content reinforcement
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 An Excellent Introduction to Game Programming Math May 8, 2009
N. Lynch
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.
 Good book, but lots of errors February 24, 2008
W. Hage (Jersey)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book was my textbook for a class. The book is well written and the author explains the concepts pretty well, my biggest problem is the errors. A lot of the answers in the back of the book are wrong. Since this was for a class we focused on the problems that did not have answers in the back of the book, but when you are trying to work through one of them as an example it can be difficult. We found at least 2 every week. Since I had a teacher it was not a big deal, but for those who are buying this book to study on their own it could be a bigger problem. I've seen other reviewers mark this up to human error, but when you are writing a book to educate you have to try to cut out errors like this and if it was maybe one or two fine, but there are a few.
Average book with nice demos August 24, 2005
Jose Romao (Europe)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The book can't be pointed as bad or good, the title tells everything, like the author says in the Introduction this book isnt the last one you should read for this field, its just a starting point, anyway I found it simple and you need to know some math and physics to get it all clear, besides that you have 6 nice demos with full code you can study and run for better understanding. Who wants to get a simple and clear basic concepts should get the book, others may prefer most complete titles.
VERY bad July 9, 2005
Anonymous
5 out of 11 found this review helpful
I bought this book hoping it would explain some of the math related to games, like vectors, quaternions, matrixes etc. and operations with them, the reason I chose this book was that I wanted one which didn't present advanced math in the first chapters.
The book fails at explaining anything at all and it doesn't just start at a WAY to basic level (I wouldn't have been surprised if the author explained multiplication).
In the chapter about trigenometry the author tries to apply what you have learned with an example of an flying arrow, (s)he doesn't even tell why it is like that just that if the arrow is shooten 50 units some way the shadow will be 25 units away from the shooter.
At first I thought it may be better later, but when the author says the following:
"Anything from a char, which can hold values from -128 and 127, to an unsigned long, which can hold values between 0 and 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 (or 2 to the power of 64)"
Here are two problems, first it is up to the compiler to choose whether char is signed or unsigned, this means it can also go from: 0-255, but the biggest mistake is to say that a long is 64 bit! How many bits a long is isn't defined in the standard and on most current compilers(MSVC++ 2003 .NET included) sizeof(long) is 32 bit.
I can't comment on the physics, matrixes etc. since I put down this book when I came to the chapter about vectors since it was just SO bad, this is why it didn't get 1 star.
For people want an alternative I recommend 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development.
some human errors, but priceless theory review! January 4, 2005
Rolando Gonzalez
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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