Thread: What Math would be good to learn to making games??

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    What Math would be good to learn to making games??

    just like the title say's.


    I want to start making games well right now would love to make a game but not professional don't plan to sell it but would make a game just so I can learn how to make a game and experience it.


    I also would like to know how to create sound effects and other stuff.

    I notice gateway they had a program where you record your voice and you can change your voice from a male to female or any other voices.

    I would love to learn how I can programming wise create sounds.

    I know the music band slipknot they have 2 guys that are programmers and I have seen behind the seens what goes on.

    the guy made a home made computer system that they put in a cart which goes on stage on top of the stage they have buttons and the programmer knows what buttons are for what sound.

    So was wondering programming wise what can you do in the sound area??

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    Learn about vectors and matrices, you will hear a lot about those.

    Look up the dotproduct and cross product, those are pretty ubiquitous.

    For sound, well what you mentioned as an example doesn't exactly relate to game programming, but DirectSound, FMOD and OpenAL are audio libraries. A programming library is something that does stuff for you, in this case plays sounds and/or music. They also allow you to extract the frequencies of sound being played such that you can make a visual to go with it, e.g. with FMOD's getspectrum() function. One example of this'd be windows media player's visualizations that change shape/color with the music.
    Last edited by BobMcGee123; 09-01-2008 at 02:57 PM.
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    In 2d, almost every problem can be solved by interpolating between two vectors (well, not every, but im amazed over how often I use it)

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    Quote Originally Posted by BobMcGee123 View Post
    Learn about vectors and matrices, you will hear a lot about those.

    Look up the dotproduct and cross product, those are pretty ubiquitous.

    For sound, well what you mentioned as an example doesn't exactly relate to game programming, but DirectSound, FMOD and OpenAL are audio libraries. A programming library is something that does stuff for you, in this case plays sounds and/or music. They also allow you to extract the frequencies of sound being played such that you can make a visual to go with it, e.g. with FMOD's getspectrum() function. One example of this'd be windows media player's visualizations that change shape/color with the music.

    Well I mean about the sound is creating your own sound effects or music.

    it's part of sound programming and does involve in game programming subject.

    I have heard super Mario uses sound programming to create the sound effects like when he jumps you hear a sound effect.

    I would like to generate my own audio without using musical instruments or other stuff to create music or sound effects.

    I was thinking more that with programming you can create your own sound wave and even edit the sound wave.

    so like if I were to record my voice I can make my voice would like a girl or a chipmunk or a very low eviish sound ect.
    Last edited by hockey97; 09-01-2008 at 03:33 PM.

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    and the Hat of Guessing tabstop's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hockey97 View Post
    Well I mean about the sound is creating your own sound effects or music.

    it's part of sound programming and does involve in game programming subject.

    I have heard super Mario uses sound programming to create the sound effects like when he jumps you hear a sound effect.

    I would like to generate my own audio without using musical instruments or other stuff to create music or sound effects.

    I was thinking more that with programming you can create your own sound wave and even edit the sound wave.

    so like if I were to record my voice I can make my voice would like a girl or a chipmunk or a very low eviish sound ect.
    There's a difference between "dealing with digitized data that represents a sound/voice/whatever" (like your chipmunk example) and "getting something to play out of a speaker". The former, in as much as you are representing data as some sort of mathematical object (in terms of a frequency function, an amplitude function, etc.) may or may not be easy to do programmatically. The latter involves hardware, which is a whole other kettle of fish, which is where the libraries come in. (The libraries may have transforms, too, I haven't looked at them really.)

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    Well I mean about the sound is creating your own sound effects or music.

    it's part of sound programming and does involve in game programming subject.

    I have heard super Mario uses sound programming to create the sound effects like when he jumps you hear a sound effect.
    It sounds like you're talking about making sounds programatically and that wouldn't be practical. Honestly, if you dont plan on selling the game, or unless you're massively into making your own sound effects, I'd just take sounds from existing games and use those.
    I'm not immature, I'm refined in the opposite direction.

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    Registered User samGwilliam's Avatar
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    Older consoles basically had mini synths on chips that you could control via hardware registers to make sounds of a certain pitch, waveform, etc and set the attack and release and such.

    So these machines had their own unique sounds. These days it's all sampled digital audio (made with real instruments/sequencers, etc).

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    http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy

    ^very good screencasts,so you really have no excuse not to learn mathematics

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    S Sang-drax's Avatar
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    It sounds like you're talking about making sounds programatically and that wouldn't be practical
    I think it would be practical for old 80's-style sound effects. OP: If you want to do that, study DSP.
    Last edited by Sang-drax : Tomorrow at 02:21 AM. Reason: Time travelling

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    Linear algebra, trigonometry and geometry are about it these days...

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    Registered User samGwilliam's Avatar
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    If you want something to move in a straight line at an arbitrary angle (i.e. not just the standard 8 ways) then x += (cos (ang) * distance) and y += (sin (ang) * distance).
    Last edited by samGwilliam; 09-17-2008 at 05:37 AM.
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    Dr Dipshi++ mike_g's Avatar
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    If you want something to move in a straight line at an arbitrary angle (i.e. not just the standard 8 ways) then x += (cos (ang) * distance) and y += (sin (ang) * distance).
    That works, but you can optimise it by storing direction and velocity as a vector. That way you only need to use trig functions when the angle changes.

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    Banned master5001's Avatar
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    Again I say this should be FAQ'ed

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    ^totally agreed ^.^~

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    Registered User guesst's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kypronite View Post
    http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy

    ^very good screencasts,so you really have no excuse not to learn mathematics
    Excellent linky.
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