Terence Martin (OdatNurd)

With the basics of trigonometry] out of the way, lets delve into something that's a little bit more advanced and totally points out that what I spouted about trig was disingenuous at best and a lie at worst; The Law of Cosines!

So now we have gone over what a vector is and also how to perform simple vector operations, so it's time to get complicated: the Dot product!

In the previous post we learned a little bit about Vectors and what they are (quick quiz: Do vectors have a position? No! That's going to be important again in a minute, so pardon me while I harp on it).

Of vital importance in 3D games, but also very important for a variety of purposes in 2D gaming, Vector math is another one of those branches of Geometry that you may or may not remember from math class (or Physics class). If you're like me, you remember that they look like little arrows and that they're probably important, but if someone was to ask you to help them with something vector related, you would excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and then slide out the window and run away.

From the Greek for "Triangle Measure", Trigonometry is both a branch of mathematics that deals with the relationships between the angles of a triangle and the lengths of its sides, and one of those subjects that you probably suffered through in your math class, possibly while making complaints to your teacher or friends that you're never going to need to know this stuff.