Vectors with Video Games (Spring 2012)

Course description

Video games are probably the most fun and creative projects in the world of computer programming. It is not hard to get into computer programming with very little math background--lots of people pick up programming as a hobby before taking high school math--and many games (Tetris, chess, even Mario or Pokémon) can be programmed with only basic math skills. However, a lot of the most successful games take place in three-dimensional worlds. If you want to make a game like Halo, World of Warcraft, or Skyrim (to name a few), there's one bit of math that can incredibly useful to know: vectors. This is a topic that is frequently glossed over in high school math, but shows up in a suprising variety of subjects.

I plan to talk in depth about the intuitions and applications of vectors for video games, and along the way discuss the video game industry and computer science in general. Due to equipment and time constraints, we won't be able to do individual, "hands-on" programming during class, but I promise to show bits of realistic code and give some cool demos. I'll put any code I write online so students can look at it after the class is over.