Hi Josh, Not necessarily. Keep in mind a lot of Jim's games including Awesome Homer are fairly simplistic compared to mainstream games of that type. There is no physics modeling, no analog jump system in place, etc therefore I suspect when he wrote Awesome Homer Jim most likely just used basic math when calculating the movement, jumping, and when calculating the distance between objects. There are of course more advanced, more professional ways of doing that stuff, but in answer to your question if you are willing to forgo a bit of realism you can write a basic side-scroller like Awesome homer without a great deal of math involved. It all really comes down to the degree of realism you are aiming for when creating a game of that type.
As far as learning the math I have always been moderately good at math so it wasn't' all that hard to pick up. Plus I have read some books on the topic such as "Programming Math and Physics" by Wendy Staller which goes in depth into how to perform many common 2d and 3d calculations required by games. There is an entire chapter on collision detection using bounded boxes, bounded spheres, and that sort of thing. So as far as how I learned it I just did because I had an aptitude for math. Some people such as yourself apparently don't. As far as writing games without advanced math as I indicated to you off list there are all kinds of basic games you can write that require little to no math. There are text adventures that are more story based and do not go into a lot of math and physics, there are card games like Blackjack and Poker that only require very basic math, and that sort of thing. those are simple games that only require simple math. If you want to write something a lot more complex such as a flight simulator or racing simulator than you will need more advanced math because those are advanced games. Hope that makes sense. Cheers! On 2/26/14, Josh <[email protected]> wrote: > how about jim's awesome homer side scroller game? do side scrollers like > that need advanced math? were you blind your whole life? how did you > learn all that math? did you have expensive braille math books like I > did? well I had them but didn't get much out of them. I wish there were > a book called how to make games without knowing advanced math. or > something like that. or some sort of lessons over skype or team-talk. > > using windows7 laptop --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
