Physics for game developers

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1. zeroqOct 2026
   When mentioning foundational 2d driving models one simply can't omit Marco Monster (2003) [1].

   Also Physics for Game Developers (2001) had a hilarious chapter dedicated to car racing simulation. Most of the chapter is dedicated building the scene in a minute detail - for instance pointing out that the center of gravity of the car will change during the course due to fuel consumption - only to simplify and cancel out most things at the end to leave the reader with just a handful of variables.

   [1] https://www.asawicki.info/Mirror/Car%20Physics%20for%20Games...

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2. virtue3Aug 2020
   Fun book if anyone is ever interested: Physics for Game Developers Paperback – November 15, 2001 by David M Bourg
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3. AnimatsMay 2021
   Nice.

   Looking at this decades after it was written, I'd suggest that a modern book needs more on how light behaves and what physically based rendering is trying to do. Because today you write shaders.

   On the other hand, game physics is such a specialized area that it may be worth omitting entirely. Nobody writes their own physics engine any more. Send people to "Physics for Game Developers" for that.

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4. angersockSep 2013
   I've read or owned several of those books at one point or another. Some opinions:

   The Game Programming Gems series has a wonderful variety of articles, and even though many of the graphics tricks are no longer super useful the software engineering and exposure to how other people think about systems is very useful.

   The O'Reily Physics for Game Developers is kind of lacking--it's more a cookbook than anything else; the Eberly books are a much better use of time, and actually explore the math much better.

   Computational Geometry in C by O'Rourke is wonderful, but a bit academic for almost any game development purposes.

   Geometric Tools for Computer Graphics has a permanent place on my desk, and was very useful when doing graphics work as well as CAD software stuff. It actually bothers with some of the rigor of the linear algebra you'll use in graphics. Not listed but An Integrated Introduction to Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling by Goldman does a superb job of the mathematics behind projective geometry for graphics, and is probably one of the best ways I've ever read for getting the real reason why we do the math we do. He's referenced in the Geometric Tools book.

   Write Portable Code has some great insights, but if you've had to deal with cross-platform code for more than a couple of years you probably won't find too much new. For a beginner it's invaluable.

   CLRS Introduction to Algorithms is very cool and all, but as Johnathon Blow pointed out in a talk the fact is that for game development you are better off using the dumbest, most straight-forward data structures you can. There are a lot of great things in there, but the sort of workhorse stuff you'll use in games (BSPs, quad- or octrees, hash tables, A-star, etc.) is either already made for you or is better covered elsewhere. Looks impressive on the bookshelf though.

   AI Game Development was a very long, very interesting read, but tended to be somewhat academic. Programming Believable Characters For Computer Games is much better from a practical standpoint, surveying a large number of AI techniques and the implementation of examples for each one (very much a sort of "Seven AI Architectures in Seven Weeks" kind of affair).

   ~

   Not on the list, but two I'd really recommend:

   Game Scripting Mastery by Varanese is basically "Compiler and Interpreter Design and Implementation for High Schoolers". It's a massive tome, and covers both Lua integration and then rolling a scripting engine from scratch (lex and yacc and all).

   Game Coding Complete by McShaffry is utterly fantastic. Another tome (just shy of 1000 pages), it goes over how to structure a game, covering a lot of important but banal stuff like resource management and passing Microsoft Windows certifications and project management and the like. It's also written in a very entertaining manner, and has lots of helpful anecdotes about why things should be done a particular way--often by counterexample of what happens when they weren't.

   ~

   In general, the various Gems series are all worth reading. Morgan Kaufmann does a pretty solid job, and tends to have a lot of math (if that's your thing). Charles River Media is mostly good.

   Premier Press Game Development varies widely in quality--some of the books are amazing, many are meh, some are garbage.

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