Description
Colliding billiard balls. Missile trajectories. Cornering dynamics in speeding cars. By applying the laws of physics, you can realistically model nearly everything in games that bounces around, flies, rolls, slides, or isn't sitting still, to create compelling, believable content for computer games, simulations, and animation. Physics for Game Developers serves as the starting point for enriching games with physics-based realism.
Full Description
Colliding billiard balls. Missile trajectories. Cornering dynamics in speeding cars. By applying the laws of physics, you can realistically model nearly everything in games that bounces around, flies, rolls, slides, or isn't sitting still, to create compelling, believable content for computer games, simulations, and animation.
Physics for Game Developers serves as the starting point for those who want to enrich games with physics-based realism.
Part one is a mechanics primer that reviews basic concepts and addresses aspects of rigid body dynamics, including kinematics, force, and kinetics. Part two applies these concepts to specific real-world problems, such as projectiles, boats, airplanes, and cars. Part three introduces real-time simulations and shows how they apply to computer games. Many specific game elements stand to benefit from the use of real physics, including:
- The trajectory of rockets and missiles, including the effects of fuel burn off
- The collision of objects such as billiard balls
- The stability of cars racing around tight curves
- The dynamics of boats and other waterborne vehicles
- The flight path of a baseball after being struck by a bat
- The flight characteristics of airplanes
You don't need to be a physics expert to learn from
Physics for Game Developers, but the author does assume you know basic college-level classical physics. You should also be proficient in trigonometry, vector and matrix math (reference formulas and identities are included in the appendixes), and college-level calculus, including integration and differentiation of explicit functions. Although the thrust of the book involves physics principles and algorithms, it should be noted that the examples are written in standard C and use Windows API functions.
Colophon
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animals on the cover of Physics for Game Developers are a cat and a mouse. The age-old rivalry between cat and mouse has been the topoic of many children's books and Saturday cartoons. From traditional folk tales, such as Aesop's fables and Grimm Brothers' fairy tales, to today's cartoons, such as Tom & Jerry, the cat has chased and bullied the mouse and the mouse has avoided becoming lunch. The cat may be bigger and stronger, but the mouse is small, fast, and can fit in tight spaces, so the end result is often a battle of wits. Darren Kelly was the production editor, Barbara Willette, was the copyeditor, and Donna Leik, Larry Hykes, and Charles Snyder were the proofreaders for Physics for Game Developers. Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Angie Wiley wrote the index.
Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is 19-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1, using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.
David Futato designed the interior layout. Techbooks, Inc. implemented the design. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read, using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Linley Dolby.
Whenever possible, our books use a durable and flexible lay-flat binding.
