Game 2302-0100: introduction

Table of contents

• Preface
• Course description
• Adherence to the course description
• Course resources
• Homework assignments
• What's next?
• Miscellaneous
• Download source code

Preface

This module is the first in a series of modules designed for teaching GAME2302 Mathematical Applications for Game Development at Austin Community College in Austin, TX.

See the Download source code section to download source code files for the modules contained in this collection.

Course description

As of September 2012, the official course description reads: "Presents applications of mathematics and science in game and simulation programming. Includes the utilization of matrix and vector operations, kinematics, and Newtonian principles in games and simulations. Also covers code optimization."

Adherence to the course description

Online resources are provided to the student for each of the topics identified in the above description. The topics merge inthe final module of the collection, which explains an animated simulation of the first-person view of a human cannonball from the point in time that the humancannonball leaves the cannon until the human cannonball lands in the safety net, or fails to land in the safety net. The trajectory and the point of impact are determined by suchfactors as:

• the acceleration of gravity,
• the muzzle velocity, and
• the elevation and azimuth of the aiming mechanism on the cannon.

Course resources

This course does not use a printed textbook. Instead, the primary resources for the course are:

1. An interactive tutorial by Dr. Bradley P. Kjell titled Vector Math for 3D Computer Graphics . (You can view the tutorial online or you can download a copy of an older version of the tutorial in a zip file here . Extract the contents of the zip file and open the file named index.html in your browser to view the tutorial offline. Be aware, however, that some ofthe chapters in the zip file perform animation using Java applet code that may no longer be supported.) The tutorial is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .
2. A sub-collection of physics modules beginning with 2302-0300 Introduction to Physics Component published at cnx.org .
3. This collection of modules published at cnx.org .
4. Most of the programming examples in the course will be written in Java/OOP. Therefore, you may need some reference material on Java/OOPprogramming. The collection named Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with Java at cnx.org contains the course material for three complete Java/OOP programming courses at Austin Community College.The section named ITSE 2321 Object-Oriented Programming (Java) contains the material for the first course. The section named ITSE2317 - Java Programming (Intermediate) contains the material for the second course. The section named INEW 2338 - Advanced Java (Web) contains the material for the third course.
5. Here are some additional Java/OOP references that you may find useful:
   1. Java Platform Standard Edition 7 Documentation
   2. Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 API Specification
   3. Reading the Javadoc - how to read the API
   4. The Java Tutorials
   5. Simplified Java tutorial