Book Image

Game Physics Cookbook

By : Gabor Szauer
Book Image

Game Physics Cookbook

By: Gabor Szauer

Overview of this book

Physics is really important for game programmers who want to add realism and functionality to their games. Collision detection in particular is a problem that affects all game developers, regardless of the platform, engine, or toolkit they use. This book will teach you the concepts and formulas behind collision detection. You will also be taught how to build a simple physics engine, where Rigid Body physics is the main focus, and learn about intersection algorithms for primitive shapes. You’ll begin by building a strong foundation in mathematics that will be used throughout the book. We’ll guide you through implementing 2D and 3D primitives and show you how to perform effective collision tests for them. We then pivot to one of the harder areas of game development—collision detection and resolution. Further on, you will learn what a Physics engine is, how to set up a game window, and how to implement rendering. We’ll explore advanced physics topics such as constraint solving. You’ll also find out how to implement a rudimentary physics engine, which you can use to build an Angry Birds type of game or a more advanced game. By the end of the book, you will have implemented all primitive and some advanced collision tests, and you will be able to read on geometry and linear Algebra formulas to take forward to your own games!
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
Game Physics Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Reviewer
Acknowledgements
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Books


In general, books on modern game physics are hard to find. The technology and methods that are considered modern are constantly changing and evolving. This makes writing books for cutting edge physics simulation challenging. I want to provide a list of useful books that might cover additional topics. I will not provide a review of each book.

Most of these books cover overlapping topics. The basics of an impulse-based physics engine are the same; because of this, the books tend to cover similar topics. However, each of these books provides some unique details or algorithm that makes the book worth owning:

  • Physics Modeling for Game Programmers

    • Conger, D. (2004). Physics modeling for game programmers. Boston, MA: Thomson/Premier.

    • By David Cogner, ISBN-13: 978-1592000937

  • Physics for Game Developers

    • Bourg, D. M., & Bywalec, B. (2013). Physics for game developers. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.

    • By David M Bourg and Bryan Bywalec, ISBN-13: 978-1449392512

  • Game Physics Engine Development

    • Millington, I. (2010). Game physics engine development: how to build a robust commercial-grade physics engine for your game. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

    • By Ian Millington, ISBN-13: 978-0123819765

  • Game Physics

    • Eberly, D. H. (2010). Game physics. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier.

    • By David H. Eberly, ISBN-13: 978-0123749031

  • Real-Time Collision Detection

    • Ericson, C. (2004). Real-time collision detection. San Francisco, CA: Elsevier.

    • By Christer Ericson, ISBN-13: 978-1558607323

  • Game Physics: A Practical Introduction

    • By Ben Kenwright, ISBN-13: 978-1471033971