This book explores the branches of mathematics from the game developer’s perspective, rejecting the abstract, theoretical approach in favor of demonstrating real, usable applications for each concept covered. Use of this book is not confined to users of a certain operating system or enthusiasts of particular game genres; the topics covered and the source code provided in this book are universally applicable.

Mathematics for Game Developers is just that?a math book designed specifically for the game developer, not the mathematician. As a game developer, you know that math is a fundamental part of your programming arsenal. In order to program a game that goes beyond the basics, you must first master concepts such as matrices and vectors. In this book, you will find some unique solutions for dealing with real problems you?ll face when programming many types of 3D games. Not only will you learn how to solve these problems, you?ll also learn why the solution works, enabling you to apply that solution to other problems. You?ll also learn how to leverage software to help solve algebraic equations. Through numerous examples, this book clarifies how mathematical ideas fit together and how they apply to game programming.

Good Topic Range- Obtuse Explanations

I found this book thoroughly frustrating.

I assumed that a book with "for Game Developers" would make concepts easier to understand for the less mathematically inclined in this world. Quite the oppposite, I found my Calculus textbook explained vectors much easier.

He spends very little time actually explaining the concepts instead opts to throw formulas at the reader. Understandably, formulas are necessary to be mathematically concise, but he could at least spend time discussing them. Now I could forgive him his obtuse explanations if I had a set of practice problems to work with, but there are none. I wasn’t even aware of the calculation errors until I read the other reviews, so this only lowers my esteem for the author.

Now to be fair, I haven’t gotten to many of the later topics, so it’s possible the book will get better. The few I have looked at, however, do not lend me to such optimism. Purchase at your own risk.

A badly written rip-off of better books

Large parts of this book obviously plagiarize the book Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics. But the writing style is horrible and there are tons of errors. If you’re at all serious about really learning this stuff, you’re much better off with the book that Mr. Tremblay stole a lot of his content from. Overall, a very unprofessional piece of work.

No,No,No

Good:

Many different topics;
Topics on optimization;

Bad:

Erros;
VERY short cover of the topics;
Only for review of the concepts NOT for study (find a good Calculus book, or you will be lost!);

No,No,No

Good_

Many different topics;
Topics on optimization;

Bad_

Erros;
VERY short cover of the topics;
Only for review of the concepts NOT for study (find a good Calculus book, or you will be lost!);

No,No,No

Good:



Many different topics;

Topics on optimization;



Bad:



Erros;

VERY short cover of the topics;

Only for review of the concepts NOT for study (find a good Calculus book, or you will be lost!);

Excellent book; Still strongly recommend despite the errors

This book covers a lot of good material. Some of which you would never get to know unless you go for a math major in college. The strength of this book is that it makes this complex material accessible. The text is easy to understand and does not provide pages and pages of proofs like many other math books would likely do (at least "Mathematics for 3D Game Programming & Computer Graphics" is pretty heavy on proofs and somewhat short on examples. The chapters on collision detection, visibility, splines, numerical approximationand and space partionning are beyond excellent.

The only complain I have about this book is the mistakes that are particularly visible in the first chapters. I personally don’t see that as a big deal, since the author seems pretty keen on posting all the known mistakes on the book’s web site. Once/if a second edition/print of the book comes out and fixes the mistakes, it will clearly outshine all of the other ones I have read by a head and shoulder.

I strongly recommend this book despite its mistakes.

Terrible editing hurts a solid effort

I would love to have given this five stars, but the book has too many editing gaffes for me to do it.

It’s too bad, because snafus aside, the author tackles a subject --the mathematics involved in computer graphics and game programming-- that has needed a good beginner’s text, and he gives the best coverage that 600 pages allows. The range of topics here could have stretched three volumes or more, but to the author’s credit he never runs through important equations or derivations with some "trust me" blurb before hopping to the next stone in the river. Most formulas presented without proof are either special cases or tedious extensions of what we’ve already learned.

The book’s writing is sharp, accesible, but not dumbed down; the mathematical rigor is fairly high, particularly for a survey text. One minor fault; some of the figures and graphs seemed a bit primitive and didn’t put their intended points across as well as more elaborate diagrams could have.

Now for the bad part. The editing is poor, almost ridiculous in some parts. In the first 50 pages I counted at least five equation errors, including two pages that mentioned vector cross products using dot product notation-- a missed slam dunk in linear algebra terms. Beginners will be thrown for a loop with mistakes like that, and while they’ll probably cope better with the mislabeled and duplicated diagramms, they’re no fun either.

Overall, a solid effort, and if you don’t mind double-checking someone else’s equations then you’ll glean a good deal from this. A second, corrected, edition I assume would be much more valuable, and an errata page on the web would make a *big* difference right away. If interested, Eric Lengyel’s "Mathematics for 3D Game Programming" is an excellent companion to this book; it covers fewer subjects perhaps, but is more proof-oriented and doesn’t have anything like this book’s editing troubles.

Excellent Book, but...

This is an exceptionally accessible text on mathematical concepts that would otherwise require years of wading through higher level college math courses. The parts of the text that are less clear on the first read-through become immediately clear when connected to later sections. The only downside is that the book is PLAGUED with errors - as many as 3 or 4 every couple of pages. Carelessly copied and pasted equations are often out of place or incorrect. Diagrams are improperly labelled. Often in the text the author says precisely the opposite of what he means. Andrew LaMothe may be a very smart man, but this book was woefully in need of a different editor before it went out the door. It actually helped me pay attention and learn since I had to constantly keep an eye out for errors, and make sense out of what the author meant, so (suprisingly!) in spite of the prevalant errors I’d recommend this book to anyone.

Finally understanding it

I just started to learn some of theses chapters in school and this book is actually better than my prof; Seriously. The book actually builds from what it teaches; it’s not just a bunch of abstract concepts which are completely seperated from one another. I’ve never seen matrices as vectrors of vectors for example, but it totally makes sense. I’m not yet done with this book, but the more I read, the more I dig dah thing. It’s such a great feeling to actually undertsand what you do (I used to copy/pate code from the internte) without really knowing what it does. Definetely worth the price too! My coll. math books are way more expensive than that and yet way less useful; especially for games :(.