Video Games

  So many of my students are into video games.  They play on their mobile devices, on their televisions, on anything they can put the game on but I wondered what role math plays in the creation of video games.  After a search, I found some great information on exactly how its used.

Quora has a great answer to this question and includes a diagram of a scene with the math scribbled on it.  Mathematics is used to calculate the angle of a jump, how high the creature can go and how far with the angle.  The author gives lots of examples from real games to who where and how the math is used.  Apparently much of the design starts with a word document before moving to a spread sheet.

NRICH has a lovely article which talks about the math used in computer games.  The first part discusses the shooters, the second goes on to show how geometry, vectors, and transformations help create the world.  This is wonderful because it provides examples, exercises and answers so students have a chance to see the whole picture.  I'm going to down load this and share it with some of my students.

This site has a  nice list of the types of maths used most and how they are used.  The author does state that he goes to others who have the math expertise for certain things.  This site includes an actual illustration showing how the math is used to find trajectories of a cannon or something similar and its included in a code sample.

Here is a nice Prezi covering the basics of math used in game designing.  It also includes the levels of education and a bit about salary.  It is a short thing but very well put together.

This place has a nice short article on the importance of knowing geometry inside out for the graphics part of gaming.  I like the discussion of 2 D into 3D objects, congruence , and other aspects of geometry.

The last place is on the  game designing site which states that math is the foundation of game design.  It lists the general topics and gives some details.  Its a nice article.

Armed with this information, I have a real answer to "When will I ever use this?".  I can talk about designing video games or even use a couple things to create an activity for them.