₦airaland Forum

Hello all, it's really been quite sometime since i my last post, pardon me. Just got over developing a 2d childrens game for a huge client (though i'm still broke cos pay day hasn't come yet). It was created in flash using flash graphics and actionscript language. It's a Q&A and has a biblical theme yet fun. Just thought i should post some snaps.

@gameaddict. Good thing you are learning C++ and 'Java' as your first programming languages. As pc_guru rightly stated, it's a bit too soon to try your hands on game programming even if it's just text based, I'll advice you stick with learning C++/Java and once you have gotten to a certain piont where you live and breath the language and programming, then you can jump to creating what ever program you mind can think of. It takes time an practise.Keep coding.

@tiana85. Programming doesn't necessarily need a processor with a lot of punch to it. I believe anything later than 1995 will serve the purpose.
@all. Sorry people for the delay in posting. Currently have a job to do that's not giving me enough spare time for anything else.
Keep playing and coding games.

@femu. I counter differ your statement that it doesn't take at least 4yrs to become a game programmer. In fact your post counters your statement.
1.Consider the packages u have to learn 'to kick off' as u stated.
Assuming the aspirant knows java, he/she has never done game programming with any language so the truth is he'll/she'll have to learn the uncommon packages in java that favour game development. Learning those takes time.
2. The aspirant might be good at playing logic and bad at doing maths, fact is, a larger part of creating games has to do with how well u r in math cause u need for starts, trig, matrix ,and vectors. Learning that takes time.
3. What if the aspirant has never done graphics with a digital paint program and can only sketch stick figures. Bringing him/her to speed will take time too.
4. Say the aspirant is wanting to create 3d titles. He'll/she'll have to learn a 3d modeling package like Blender/3ds max/maya. Learning that will take time too.
5. What about collision, physics, sound sync, game engine development, e.t.c. Even as a pro in the other fields it still will take one time to put all these together.
The only way to program games that won't take that long is with Html and Javascript and that's only if u know both. I've done a card and Q&A game with it.
Like being a hacker doesn't just mean u have the tools to hack that's why u r one, so also being a game programmer doesn't just mean u have the tools to program games make u one. Also u forgot to state where in the country one can go to and learn game programming u only left your phone number. It takes time and that's the truth, we nigeria's alway want to assume we can get there by taking shortcuts that are non existent.

@tiana. Making the right recommendation on what book u should get to learn game programming using JAVA will be insanely difficult cos u could just google/amazon it up. I'm of the believe that Java has almost everything u need to create a 2D game in any of its released SDK's. For an engine to make 3D games with java, google and download JMONKEYENGINE. Hope that helps get u started. Good luck.

@tiana85. The question should be 'where can on learn game programming in nigeria'. The answer is if i'm up to date 'currently nowhere'. Cause on average, as a starter u'll have to take approx 4 yrs intense training to be on. The language used is not the bigger issue here but the general overview of wat's needed to make a game a game. U could follow up on this thread:
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-276737.0.html . I promise to keep things exciting. WELCOME.

@pussyboy. Being a critic is just not my style. As i said and as is well know in this field of practice, if u ain't got no love 4 it then u won't get out the 'door'. By that i mean u won't get as far as you should to be competitive. Search the inner-most creeks of u soul and find what wills u toward this area, then find out if it has to do with instructing the machine to get results or something else. Popular saying, 'when there's the will then there's the way'. Literally.
Now, there are alot of options in this field to choose from:
web page author, web developer, database admin, database application developer, systems networking, software programming , game programming, e.t.c. It's up to u.

@Everything. I don't feel i was being harsh on the chap. Just being candid. Think of it, he want's to get in to boost his CV, stay atop on IT, and grab cash. Totally the wrong reason if u ask me. He didn't even sound like he's got love for it. Wat do u think?

@pussyboy. Sincerely speaking, u r going to end-up regreting. And Oracle is not the name of a programming language.

@malone5923. I'm guessing u r having a hard time reading the soft copy not because C++ is making it hard but cos u r not used to staying in front of a monitor for a lenghty period. Did u go to www.softlookup.com and copy the C++ tutorial there. Pls do! A secret to learning a programming language is to get the concepts the language exposes & where they are useful. The how to get it done(syntax part) will come naturally with practice. While i was learning to program i used command prompt and Notepad. I believe every beginner should use that and leave out the flashy IDE till they are comfortable with the language. For a cmd prompt C++ compiler , google: Digital mars C++ compiler . it's free. Also, an advice while u r learning alway try to send output to the console(cmd prompt) it'll give u the assurance that what the tutorial said is fact in the language. Also sleep on an idea u just got from the tutorial that's not yet clear to u. It works magic.
Follow this and U WILL LEARN faster than i did. Also since we r talking about creating games with C++ any question on the language is welcome.
Keep playing and coding games. See u soon.

@big_head. I'm currently developing a flash game for phone and it's for promotional purpose only by a potential client. I could post a demo of a game for Pc cause that's where i'm focusing on but it'll have to be in 'raw code' and nairaland doesn't host EXE files. Sorry.
Keep playing and coding games.

@malone5923 and @all. A Binary Space Partitioning(BSP) tree is a graphics data structure that divides a space into compact inter-linked chunks to form a data tree so as to provide efficient draw rates for a virtual world. That's about the simplest way to put it. Have u ever sat down to think of why game graphics hasn't gotten to the point where it looks exactly like u're playing an animated movie like Beowulf or Final Fantasy: the Spirit within?

Guess u have, and someone might have said it has to do with the processor speed. That's just the setback games have cause for a decent animation of the virtual world the computer has to calculate the bunch of code sequence that forms every other frame at a rate of 1/60th of a second or less. That's some work though and since processors have their limits game programmers started coming up with great ideas to make the processor have less work to do theirby giving it a little space to do the calculations that improve quality. They came up with Depth Buffers, Octrees, BSP's, Scene Graphs, Occluders e.t.c. All to reduce the amount of geometry that the processor (CPU & GPU) processes. There are other methods like View Frustrum culling, and some developers us Fog. 

Now for your next question, how are shadows generated. It can be done the hard way or the easy way. Let me start with the easy way. Have u played the game Resident Evil 3: Nemesis on the Ps1? If u have try playing it again. U'll notice that the shadow for every character in the game is a simple circle projected at the feet of each character. Now the hard way. They are two that i know of that are used in games. One uses the stencil buffer of the graphics board and the other uses some generated texture as the game is playing. I totally understand and can explain the texture one. Here we take the lights direction to the object and draw a bitmap of the silhouette of the object as seen by the light. We then project that image onto the world also taking into consideration the lookAt direction of the camera. It a bit mathematical but less detailed than when the first stencil buffer method is used. U should download the Ogre3d graphics engine cause i'll be using that in discussion at some point here and it allows use of both methods.

Now for your 3rd question. The different genre of games are :
1. Action/arcade- Here the player is taken through a fast pacing game where he must advance by attacking unending obstacles to win. Games like ; Street of Rage on the mega drive/genesis and sonic the hedgehoge fall into this category.

2. Strategy: Here the speed and repetition of the players action is reduced as the player must plan he's empire so to speak before acting. They can be Turn based stratagy like the Metal Gear Acid on the PSP which give u for ever to decide a next line of action or they can be Real Time strategy like chess master.

3. Adventures : Here the player is give a world to play in but it ends when the whole story which the game is centered around ends.

4. Platforms: These are similar to the adventure type but it seems they are made a bit different cause the player must pick stuff like coins or coconuts and jump on platforms as they advance.

Keep playing and coding games. Later!

Welcome gamer$. Aya ya ya ya! It's been almost a month since i posted here. Hope no one has given up on this. Back to business.
I was looking into some graphics engine called IRRLICHT. It really is a beauty. Try getting it @ http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net. This posts idea came from the engine so i'll like to talk about collision detection basics.
Have u ever played a game and wondered how interacting with the virtual world happens? Of course u have or u wouldn't be reading this post. It's all made possible by the different methods of collision detection.
Let's start with the basics. One method which is normally introduced as the first when learning to create games is Axis-Aligned Bounding Box(AABB) method. If u had two cubes moving in your world and u want to know if they collide so that u respond in your code by not making them pass through each other using this method. Firstly, since both objects are cubes u have a way to detect collision. U take the first box say box1. Looking at it u'll find that no matter how it's orientation is in the world it will always have a single vertex that's farthest right of the worlds X-axis, and another that's farthest up of the Y-axis, and also another that's farthest into the world's Z-axis. Also u have a single vertex having a minimum X-axis, Y-axis and Z-axis. With those found vertices u 'draw' a box around your cube. This box will encapsulate your box1. Secondly u do the same for the second(box2) cube in your world, finding its own minimum and maximum vertices for X,Y,and Z.
Now taking box1 and checking if box2 collides with it u check to see if box2 minimum X is not greater than box1 maximum  X and box2 minimum X is not less than box1 min X and box2 min Y is not greater than box1 max Y and box2 min Y is not greater than box2 min Y and finally that box2 min Z is not greater than box1 max Z and box2 min Z is not less than box1 min Z. If this statement results to TRUE then both boxes are colliding so u write code to take action.
The second basic method is called Spherical-bounding which simply uses a sphere to encapsulate the objects u want to detect collision on.
Say u have two objects called ball1 & ball2 in your world, to detect if they are colliding u take ball1 and using this method u locate the center of the ball which should be given by the pivot-point as specified in your modeling software. That point becomes the center of the sphere u will encapsulate ball1 with. Now since a sphere has a radius u need to specify the radius of your bounding sphere, u get that data by locating the vertex with the maximum value in all 3 axis. Let's say that you find one with a max Z axis of 35, so your bounding sphere will now have a radius of 35 and the center as found previously. U do the same for the other ball (ball2) . To find if the collide take both bounding spheres and check to see if the distance btw ball1 bounding-sphere's center and that of ball2 is less than the sum of the radius of both bounding-spheres. If the result is TRUE then u have both balls colliding.
Do some research on the net for these. Keep playing & coding games. Need to sleep.

@all. Just found this tread and i must say we have alot of knowledgeable people n here. I find that the issue on design patterns is misinterpreted by some in here who assume a design pattern to mean some 'black box' entity. Design patterns are said optimal ways of approaching a problem which can be coded in any language. Take for instance the Singleton pattern. It's a way of allowing the creation and existence of one instance of a variable in a program. This can be implemented as a single constant in non-OO languages like old Pascal, as an expicitly heap allocated variable in C, as a class member variable using static keyword in C++, e.t.c.
What about the Publisher-Subscriber pattern, which lets some entity(function,procedure,object) notify/call someother entity at some said event. This to can be implemented in any language regardless of what paradigm/style it supports. So it's not black boxes we talk about when we talk about design-patterns but an approach to solving a repetable problem faced by programmers that doesn't direct u in what way u should write it but in what way u should think when faced with such.
Also i'll like to say that i hope alot of us are not copy-paste programmers but thinkerers.

@poster. A number is odd if when divided by 2 u get a decimal and it's even if u don't. Guess the code should have something like :
if N mod 2 = 0
write("even number"
else write("odd number"

Welcome to a new post. I'll be talking about a really easy topic: Frames & Frame Buffers.
What's a frame? Simply put, a frame is a section of memory allocated for the storage of a windows pixel data.
A frame buffer is a video device that signals the monitor to write a completed frame to the screen.
A common question that beginning graphics programmers ask is why have a frame buffer when we can just write each pixels data as it is calculated to the screen. Imagine a factory scenario where one worker fills a bottle with soft-drink and another takes it and puts it in a crate. That's going to be alot of work for each worker passing/receiving each bottle as well as performing there specific task. Consider the introduction of a mediator who's to take over the task of receiving & passing to the next worker who puts it in a crate. The total work is the much less in the system as one worker can keep sleeping until woken by the mediator once for every completed set of filled bottles that will fill a crate to carry out his task of putting that set in a crate. This is proven mathematically by r * 1 < r * w. Where r is the total bottles(read pixels)  that fill a crate(one frame) and w is the number of times we wake the sleeping worker (write operation call to the monitor) to put the set in a crate (the monitor).
Note that the monitor writes to the screen by using an electron gun which writes pixel data starting from the top left pixel to the bottom right pixel in a row by row order and returns to the top left when done writing to the whole screen.
Now, if u have been into game graphics programming for a while u must have heard of the term Double Buffering. This is a technic for making animation on screen run smoothly with out the effect of tear-off. Tear-off occurs when the monitor is drawing one frame to the screen while at the same time the the computer is writing new pixel data to that same frame. What happens is u see one portion of the screen having the old frames image while another portion will have the new frames image.
Double buffering creates two buffers name the front-buffer and the back-buffer. The front-buffer refers to the frame that the monitor is using and the back-buffer refers to the frame that the computer is using at anytime.
Keep playing & coding games. See u soon.

Do u want to learn real quick!? I hear there's this plastic surgery that turns ur brain to a sponge!! Stop dreaming friend. Visit www.softlookup.com and get the c++ tutorial it's the kicker. Also google: digital mars c++ compiler it's a cmd line compiler. As a beginner it's best not to think of the language as being the same thing as the visual IDE u use. Hope it helps. If u've never programmed then start with javascript.

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Welcome to a new post gamers. It's been a week or 2 since my last post i know. Well, by request of an aspiring game programmer in here i'll be talking more on pixels and how it gets drawn on the monitor and the lot.

Now, what's the colour of light? You definitely will say white. Probe a little deeper and u'll find out that light is composed of 3 colours Red, Green, and Blue. These are called the primary colours of light. If u've ever painted on canvas u'll want to disagree with me on that and say that the primary colours are Red, Yellow, Blue. You are not totally wrong but i wasn't refering to the primary colours of pigments but of light. Light uses what's called additive colour mixing while pigment paint uses what's called subtractive colour mixing (wiki the difference).

Ok now, since i've explained what pixels are in a previous post let's talk about how those boys get their colour.

The computer as u know stores all data as bits(BInary digiTs). Each pixel on screen has a portion of the systems memory set aside for storing the data representing the colour it will get. The colour of a single pixel is a combination of the amount/level of Red, Green, & Blue. Each component of the colour of a pixel (i.e red, green, blue) takes 8 bits of memory so in total a single pixel takes 24 bits of the systems memory (8 bits x 3 components) and takes an extra 8 bits if you chose to also have the Alpha component of a pixel set therefore, a single pixel will take 32 bits of memory [24 plus 8]. The alpha component is used to specify the opacity/transparency of the pixel. Since you know that a binary number has a decimal equivalent and each colour component takes 8 bit , the range of a components value is from 0 to 255 (2 pow 8 - 1). So when you send a pixels colour value as RGBA(255,0,0,255) you make that pixel red and non-transparent. So, if u create a window for your application with dimensions say 640 by 480 you take an area of the  screen containing 307,200 pixels (640 x 480) and since you might chose to us a pixel with 24 bits (RGB) data space or one with 32 bits (RGBA) data space your application will take a total system memory of 7,372,800 bits (approx 921kb) or 9,830,400 bits (approx 1.2 Mb) respectively for the creation of its window.

Moving on, to get your desired image on screen u need to specify the colour for all of those pixels and the computer will paint them as given.
How do you tell the computer to do that? You use a graphics API.  As a practice, grab the Notepad app, type in it:
<body bgcolor = rgb(255, 255, 0) > </body>

Save the document as yellow.html. Now double click on it an tell me what happens.
Keep playing & coding games. See u soon!

Then wiki what it means to program.

@malone5923 and @ALL. The "HISTORY" of graphics API's. That's one subject i hate (HISTORY). I'll try to talk about the most widely used graphics api(s), but i'll start by talking about the 'atoms' of graphics(PIXEL). A pixel (short for picture element) is the smallest area on a screen that can be give a colour. Remember playing those china imported hand-held games that only had a variant of Tetris installed in them? They had blocks that were combined to create the different game objects (box, L, T,  I). I'm sure u got fed-up with those things soon enough. Well, the point is the smallest area on the screen of those games that can be filled/painted in monochrome (single colour) was the size of the small box. That represents a pixel for those games and nothing smaller can be drawn in them. Now, if u've got a digital cam or have read articles on them u must have come across something called mega-pixels. That just specifies the number of small box's that fit into the cam's LCD. U might wonder why the manufature's always come up with cams with a larger mega-pixel. The idea, if u haven't gotten it already, is that the more pixels that are contained  on a screen the better the quality of the image produced.  So which ever api u use to create computer graphics, the end result is a collection of pixels on screen.
Ok now, let's talk about Graphics Api's. Before 3D graphic Api standard libraries were made like OpenGL & Direct3D, each system manufacture wrote her own API for the system it produced. So, if u wanted to create a graphical application for the system u have to get ur hands dirty with the systems own Graphics Api. And that was alot of headache for our predecessors trying to port code to another system with its own graphics api. Now, we have standard OpenGL which is a graphics library that's implemented on a vast number of machines including windows and we also have Direct3D which is tied to Microsoft Windows. So, i won't be saying which is popular and which isn't; won't want a war on this thread now.
Both API's (OpenGL & Direct3D) are mature and u can do alot with either. They both enable you the programmer to create 3-dimensional objects on screen, Texture those objects, set up a camera to view the objects from any angle in virtual space, transform (move, rotate, scale) the objects e.t.c. Have to run. Keep playing and coding games. Later people!

@ibo. The decision on what programming language u should learn is based on what u already knw and what u intend to learn. This thread is for game programming aspirants in general and the code i post is in C++. If u've never used any programming language b4 nor a scripting language, i'll advice u learn HTML code then build up from there. But if u r strong hearted, patient, determined, and crafty i'll say u start with C++ then back to C. It's up to u. Keep playing & coding games. Later.

@malone5923. Game Programming in itself isn't an easy field but it's do able with persistance and practice. Well, u can come up with a topic u want to be clear on and i'll discuss it the best i can.Since u r a beginner u r the better in judging what topics a beginner will want to begin with. Also, i take note on a fault of mine, i haven't been posting graphical illustrations with my discussion. I'll try to as often as i can. Keep playing & coding games. Later!

Welcome to a new post gamers. Today, i'll be talking about a very intresting topic on Game Programming Mathematics. Don't get scared now! It's just Vectors i'll be talking about. What's a Vector you say? Well, a vector is a mathematical entity used to represent quantities that have a magnitude/size and a direction. By that i mean quantities like Force(push or pull), velocity(displacement per secs), acceleration e.t.c. All these quantities posses 2 things:
1. A MAGNITUDE.
2. A DIRECTION.
So u can represent each one with a vector. Oh! i haven't shown what a vector looks like in math. Well, a vector is represented as a triple entity (has 3 components) say:
v = 3i + 6j + 24k
where 'v' is a vector and '3i' is its x component, '6j' is its y component & '24k' is its z component in the Cartesian Coordinate System(CCS). Now u might ask "why learn this math?". Well if u r going to be programming games u need to have a good grib on this guy(vectors). Take for example u have ur game hero character who has a rocket launcher with heat seaking missles and u aim at an evil rabbit that steals ur magic carrot and runs off. U don't have to worry cause u've picked the super heat-seaking missle equipped rocket launcher. U fire at the rabbit hoping ur rocket seaks it out and kills it which it should but how does the rocket track this baddy rabbit. Not to worry! All u need to do is get the current position of the rabbit then get the direction ur missle's head is facing and subtract ur missle heads direction from the position of the rabbit. This produces a vector with magnitude equal to the distance btw the rabbit and the missle and the direction in which the missle's should travel on to hit the jolly rabbit. How is the subtraction done?
First, get the rabbits current position say:
evilRabbit1position = (15, 0, 400);
Next, get the missles direction say:
seakerMissle1direction = (0.58, 0.58, 0.58);
Then u subtract by subtracting each component in rabbit position & missle direction:
resultVector = (15 - 0.58, 0 - 0.58, 400 - 0.58);
resultVector = (14.42, -0.58, 399.42);
Now this resulting vector tells us 2 things:
1. The distance btw the rabbit and the missle,
2. The direction in which the missle should travel to hit the rabbit.
We find this distance by taking the square root of the sum of the square of resultVector i.e:
distanceToMenace = sqrt(14.42^2 + (-0.58)^2 + 399.42^2);
distance = 399.68;
Now, we need to get the direction the missle should travel to hit the rabbit. We get it by simply dividing each component of resultVector by the distance which is actually the magnitude of the resultVector.
So,:
travelVector = (14.42/399.68, -0.58/399.68, 399.42/399.68);
travelVector = (0.0361, -0.0015, 0.9993);

The process of dividing each vector component by the magnitude of the vector is called 'NORMALISING' the vector. This gives us a vector that has a magnitude of 1. Try getting the magnitude of travelVector it should be 1. I'll talk more on vectors next post, b4 then u can visit www.euclideanspace.com for more light. Later people!

@malone5923. Programming Windows fifth edition by Charles Petzoid. Keep brushing up on that C++ book u've got and for a good starter reference on C++ visit www.softlookup.com and copy the C++ tutorial there, it's the kicker!

A BIG Welcome from me to the new aspirants.
@malone5923. Game programming is a beautiful and exciting way to stay hooked on programming and tech. Now, i wouldn't want to start listing a whole lot of books on game programming, i'll leave that work to GOOGLE. But here are some of my personal fav' sites that can come in handy:
for 3d math, www.euclideanspace.com
for latest industry news, www.gamedev.net
for libraries i program with, www.ogre3d.org
www.libsdl.org
www.lua.org
www.cegui.org.uk
www.opengl.org
for 3d modelling,
www.free3dtutorials.com
www.cgindia.org
. Also, since i'm quit certain u'll want to be developing games on Windows for now, get a book on Win32 programming API.
@tizofreak, AH! Good thing u started from the 'small' (HTML, JAVASCRIPT). We all in this industry program for the love and fun of it, or so i think. Web development is a topic i'll leave to discussion by someone else on this forum or elsewhere. Keep playing & coding games. Later!

@poster. There is no single path to follow to becoming a programmer, but like ever other field of knowledge u need 2 ingredients.
1. Curiousity. &
2. Determination.
My advice take,it or leave it , is to start with HTML coding and move up to Javascript. Good luck.

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And here's an implementation for a Scroller object written in C++. Enjoy!

Welcome again. Now, i'll be talking about some aspects of a 2D game even though i'm sure alot of us will like me to jump straight to 3D but i'm a believer in starting with the 'small'. Consider for a second the things that differentiate a 3d game u've played (like God of War) from a 2d game u played while growing up like Super mario land (if u were born in the 80's). In the 3d game there's the feel of perspective/depth, while the 2d game looks flat. Apart from that there is almost no clear distinction between both. Analysing further, we notice that in 2d games we are restricted to moving in one plane i.e up,down,right,& left. But there's this feel of advancing in a continous world. While in 3d games we have almost no restriction of movement. The illusion of advancing in a 2d game environment is made possible by the use of a scrolling algorithm (computation) that replaces the background image on the screen with an advanced portion of some texture map u created in a paint program(like GIMP) every other frame (A single frame is the final pixel data that exist in some memory (either Video RAM or System RAM) that will be sent to the monitor for drawing on its screen). So, as u move the image representing your hero u also use the Scroller to advance in the environment map, giving u the feel of continous motion through the game world. I'll be posting a .zip file containing a Scrolling solution you can play with later on. Keep playing & coding games. See you soon.

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Welcome game lovers. Here's a new week. My sincere apologie to everyone who got their hopes down in becoming a game programmer because of the last code snip' i put up. Don't mean to discourage u on ur journey to becoming one. So, i promise not to post anymore code until i'm certain a handful are up to the task. So, deviating from coding issues, i'll talk about the Cartesian Coordinate System (CCS). If u were a good listener in school, at some point u would have heard of the Cartesian Coord System which is a way of representing points/locations in  2d plane / 3-dimensional space as an ordered pair of X,Y,Z dividing space into 3 planes at right angle to each other. In game programming,this is the system used to make our life less hectic. In this system we pick any point in space and use it as a reference to describe the location of other points relative to it. Consider this, u're standing at a spot and u see this fine chick/dude walk by. If u went off to describe the marvelous event to a friend willing to listen even though he/she knows u ended up not getting the pearls number, u'll say he/she was 'N' Feet away from me. That right there is using ur position as a reference to the girl's/guy's position at that time. Every graphics library (OpenGL,Direct3D, Glide) has a means of allowing the programmer specify locations when creating virtual worlds. U can create geometry representing a monster and place it in any location in infinite virtual space. Now, there is a slight difference to the CCS used by OpenGL & D3D. This has to do with the direction which represents positive Z-axis. The Left-Handed CCS is when positive Z points into the screen away from u this is used by D3D, while the Right-Handed CCS is when positive Z-axis points from the screen towards you this is what OpenGL uses.Consider u want to move a hero model called 'Rakacan' who's positioned at (12, 1, 0) away from u i.e into the screen. Using OpenGL u'll enter the new location as (12, 1, -80) and in D3D u'll enter the new location as (12, 1, 80). Notice the negative sign for OpenGL.  There's another beautiful use of the CCS; it can be used to represent direction and magnitude simultaneously by using a math entity called vectors. Vectors can be used to describe any physical quantity that has a magnitude and a direction like Force, Velocity, Acceleration, Displacement e.t.c. Two vectors can be checked 4 the angle btw them, they can be used to generate a vector that's mutually perpendicular to both, they can be reverse or scaled up or down which have beneficial uses to a game programmer. To learn more about CCS and vectors search the net or get a good math text on Linear Algebra (ENGINEERING MATH by K.A Stroud). See u soon!