Book Image

Mathematics for Game Programming and Computer Graphics

By : Penny de Byl
5 (1)
Book Image

Mathematics for Game Programming and Computer Graphics

5 (1)
By: Penny de Byl

Overview of this book

Mathematics is an essential skill when it comes to graphics and game development, particularly if you want to understand the generation of real-time computer graphics and the manipulation of objects and environments in a detailed way. Python, together with Pygame and PyOpenGL, provides you with the opportunity to explore these features under the hood, revealing how computers generate and manipulate 3D environments. Mathematics for Game Programming and Computer Graphics is an exhaustive guide to getting “back to the basics” of mathematics, using a series of problem-based, practical exercises to explore ideas around drawing graphic lines and shapes, applying vectors and vertices, constructing and rendering meshes, and working with vertex shaders. By leveraging Python, Pygame, and PyOpenGL, you’ll be able to create your own mathematics-based engine and API that will be used throughout to build applications. By the end of this graphics focussed book, you’ll have gained a thorough understanding of how essential mathematics is for creating, rendering, and manipulating 3D virtual environments and know the secrets behind today’s top graphics and game engines.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Essential Tools
9
Part 2 – Essential Trigonometry
14
Part 3 – Essential Transformations
20
Part 4 – Essential Rendering Techniques

Introducing the main game loop

To keep any windowed application alive, the program must instigate an endless loop. We created one in Chapter 1, Hello Graphics Window: You’re On Your Way, to keep the graphics window open in the first exercise through the implementation of a while loop. Since then, we’ve continued to use this design pattern in every application. This loop in a game is called the main game loop. Each loop produces one frame of graphics. In Pygame, this frame is pushed to the screen using the pygame.display.update() or pygame.display.flip() methods.

Thus far, our graphics applications have been very simple with very little happening within the loop – however, in a full-fledged game engine, the loop is quite complex and contains multiple significant events, as illustrated in Figure 6.1:

Figure 6.1: The main game loop and associated processes

After the application begins running, various items are initialized and loaded,...