Math for Game Programmers 05 – Vector Cheat Sheet
This is the long due fifth article in this series. If you aren’t comfortable with vectors, you might want to take a look at the first four articles in this series before: Introduction, Vectors 101, Geometrical Representation of Vectors, Operations on Vectors. This cheat sheet will list several common geometrical problems found in games, and […]
The guide to implementing 2D platformers
Having previously been disappointed by the information available on the topic, this is my attempt at categorizing different ways to implement 2D platform games, list their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss some implementation details. The long-term goal is to make this an exhaustive and comprehensible guide to the implementation of 2D platform games. If you […]
Multi-thread OpenGL texture loading
Those who have used OpenGL are probably aware that you can only invoke OpenGL procedures for a given context on the thread that currently owns it – usually, the main thread. This leads many programmers to assume that OpenGL is strictly single-threaded, and that no loading can be done on the background, inside some loader […]
Understanding the Game Main Loop
Video games are simply ordinary software – there’s nothing intrinsically special about them. However, they SEEM to behave in a very different way from your ordinary everyday applications – so much that many experienced programmers are at a complete loss when faced with the task of developing a game from scratch. This difference is mostly […]
Math for Game Programmers 04 – Operations on vectors
Last time, we introduced vectors, and hopefully that introduction alone would be compelling reason to use vectors where it makes sense to. This time, we’ll discuss common operations associated with vectors, and their many uses. All of these operations are commonly found in vector operation libraries. Length Like we’ve discussed on the previous post, the […]
Math for game programmers 03 – Geometrical representation of vectors
In the previous post, we introduced vectors, and showed some very elementary uses for them. We presented them as a simple and convenient way to pack a number (3, in our case) of scalar values into a single object. Now, we’ll consider their geometrical representation, which will help you grasp them more intuitively. For simplification’s […]
Math for game programmers 02 – Vectors 101
If you don’t already use vectors (and I mean vectors in the MATHEMATICAL sense, not in the “dynamic array” sense that languages like C++ or Java use), this is probably going to be the single most useful piece of math you can learn for writing games. It’s easy, efficient, and makes your code much shorter. […]
Math for game programmers 01 – Introduction
Here comes a harsh fact of life: game programming requires mathematics. One could say that programming IS, in a way, math, but you don’t really need to know math to write the vast majority of programs. Most of the time, you don’t need it to write parsers, to interact with databases, to validate data. Games, […]
About
I'm Rodrigo Monteiro, and I have been programming video games since 1997, ranging from Klik & Play to C++ and Java. I'm the creator of the Aegisub subtitling software (together with Niels Hansen), and I like joining game programming challenges such as the Allegro SpeedHack and the Global Game Jam.
I currently work as a professional video game programmer at Bossa Studios, in London, United Kingdom.
All opinions are my own.