{"id":776,"date":"2008-07-10T09:23:15","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T01:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/?p=776"},"modified":"2019-12-07T09:55:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-07T01:55:33","slug":"math-in-computer-game-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/mathematics\/math-in-computer-game-development-776","title":{"rendered":"Math in computer game development"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A common cry in mathematics classrooms is, \"When am I ever gonna use this stuff?\"<\/p>\n<p>I think it's a perfectly reasonable question and it is evidence of the learner seeking meaning in pages of mindless algebra.<\/p>\n<p>Well, who uses math and how do they use it?<\/p>\n<p>One field where math is alive, kicking and vital is the multi-billion dollar computer games industry.<\/p>\n<p>I came across  a Math and Physics forum in gamedev.net (no longer available). It gives a fascinating insight into the things that game programmers are trying to achieve in their games and the math that they need to achieve it.<\/p>\n<p>Some recent forum topics:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Collision detection (vectors, coordinate geometry, distance formula)<\/li>\n<li>Mollweide projection (3-D geometry)<\/li>\n<li>Checking if an x,y point is within an ellipse (analytical coordinate geometry)<\/li>\n<li>Poker (probability)<\/li>\n<li>Angular velocity<\/li>\n<li>Matrix operations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I'm always impressed with how people freely give of their time and expertise on such forums.<\/p>\n<p>See also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/mathematics\/math-in-computer-games-685\">Math in computer games<\/a> for another example of how math is being used every day in the computer games industry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"alt\">See the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/mathematics\/math-in-computer-game-development-776#comments\" id=\"comms\">1 Comment<\/a> below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Behind every computer game lie many applications of mathematics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[134,127],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12325,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/12325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}