Solve your Linear Algebra Headaches and Get to Understand How it Works with Unity Game Engine.

Hi guys,

If you (or someone you know) has been having a hard time trying to understand how and why use Linear Algebra for games. This tutorial should help. Any suggestion for other topics to be covered is welcome.
Thank you!


Learntocreategames.com

 

It looks useful to beginners even although it's likely a little bit daunting to complete beginners to programming *and* linear algebra. I have some suggestions for you (I'm just trying to be helpful and not trying to be mean):

• There are a few formatting, typographic errors. For example, Introduction, P1, L1: double space between you and may; Coordinate System: P3, L1, When sing Unity; Coordinate System, P4, L1: double space after x-axis; Scalar and Vectors, P1, L4: referred [to] as; Scalar and Vectors, P1, L5: could be going a[t] 2 meters per second; Scalar and Vectors, P1, L6: double space before x-axis; some of the line-by-line description of the code examples are mixing space between Line and the number that follows... etc.
• Just out of curiosity, is "referential" an actual noun used in the academic circle? I have never seen it used as a noun in any context, usually it's "referential coordinates", "referential system", "referential frame"... etc.
• I think there is at least one picture you should reference to the source.
• I think it's worthwhile linking some of the keywords to the Unity scripting reference.
• Overall, and personally, when it comes to learning scripting I prefer having both video and well-commented code examples. If the instructions are clearly spoken at a reasonable pace, it's more efficient to learn with a video because one can listen to the video and only look (and pause) only when it's necessary. Also, reading line-by-line code explanation can be extremely boring to some...
• I feel that a lot of pictures should accompany the code examples.
• Perhaps use pictures to introduce the concept of adding and subtracting vectors and move the equations a bit further down? If you decide to do that, use the same notation in the equations in the picture - it would be much clearer and easier to pick up by a beginner.
• I prefer justified paragraphs - it's neater.

It's great that you are doing this for beginners but, please bear with me being the devil's advocate, I think introducing beginner concepts like this is doing Unity injustice. Doing a tutorial like this reminds me of the days of fighting through code examples and never actually made a single game or learned any programming - trust me, many beginners don't have the patience.

Good luck!

 

Thanks for the reply and feedback. This is very valuable. I will make these changes, as I agree, they would make the piece clearer to read, and also consider another format (video) to make it more engaging. Thanks again.

 

Odd place to start with your first post. Any reason why?

Seems accurate enough for a beginner, but Cartesian coordinates were not named after Descartes. I lost interest before the heavy math.

 

Hi there,

Thanks again for the feedback. I am currently working on improving the post to correct/improve an issues raised by readers and make it also more engaging. Can you let me know what would have kept your interest and more engaged. I was thinking of adding videos of the code + Unity project based on the post + also a Unity project to download. Would that something you think could improve the content.

About starting this thread: Yes, you are right. It looks like an odd place to start, but I thought that it may help people who may find it difficult to apply/understand algebra. There are, I believe, many people out there who would like to know more about it, although they may be either beginners or advanced users; and although I could have started with something less "heavy" I thought that because it is something that could help someone, it would be worth working on it. This being said, I understand that while the topic is of interest to many people, I may need to modify the format to make it more engaging and easier to understand.

As to Descartes, as far as I am aware of, the Cartesian coordinate system is named after him. I could be incorrect; however, many sources (including Wikipedia, Kahn Academy or Story of Mathematics) seem to confirm this (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Descartes, Kahn Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/al...st_alg/v/descartes-and-cartesian-coordinates; or Story of Mathematics: http://www.storyofmathematics.com/17th_descartes.html). I would be glad to see/use any other source stating otherwise that you have found, if you provide me with same.