Question

I’m looking to learn some fundamentals on cartesian geometry or coordinates based game programming. Platform is irrelevant, although I’m most proficient in JavaScript, C, Objective-C. Ultimately being able to create something such as dots or checkers would be ideal. The idea is for me to learn how sprites work and how pathing works programmatically. My question to you folks is where is the best place to learn the fundamentals? Something that isn’t math heavy because to be quite frank, anything further advanced than calculus to me at this point is a grey line and requires refreshing my memory.

If there is a particular book, site, or open source project — that would probably help me the most.

Thanks for any ideas.

Answer 1

I think there’s a few more steps to accomplishing your objective, which is understanding the basics of game programming. You mentioned understanding sprites and pathing, which are imperative to game programming, but I think that initially you should spend a little time understanding the programming and methodology behind general graphical user interaction.

Regardless of what language you will eventually program your game in, I think that learning in a modern language like Java or C# will provide you with a vast amount of libraries and will allow you to accomplish tasks like animation and Event Listeners much more simply.

Here is a list of guides and tutorials that I think will be extremely helpful to you just as they were to me and others:

1. This is an extremely-detailed tutorial for a Java Game Framework that includes full source code and a full walk through (with source code) of writing the infamous ‘Snake’ game in Java, complete with a control panel, score board, and sound effects!
2. The book ‘Beginning Java 5 Game Programming’ by Jonathan S. Harbour will introduce you to concepts such as 2D vector graphics and bitmap including sprite animation. Plus you can get it used on Amazon Marketplace for $12!
3. Here is an unbelievable tutorial on Sprite Animation that has more than 5 parts to it! Plus it’s written by Richard Baldwin, a Professor of CompSci and an extremely reliable and knowledgeable source. For more tutorials by him, this is his site.

Between these sources you’re going to possess the methodology of the parts that go into a game, which are applicable in any language, as well as the knowledge of how those parts can be actually implemented as well.

G’luck!