Category: 2D Movement
Category : 2D , 2D Movement , Game Dev Primer , Game Development , Sine Waves , Trigonometry
Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a whole Trig class. I will however, go over one very useful trigonometric function that is easily overlooked by beginner, and even veteran game developers. The Sine Wave. Hopefully this will fuel your own curiosity to learn more about trigonometry and how applicable it is to the world of game development.
If you know what the Sine function is, fantastic, if not, I’m sure you’ve heard the term. You may have encountered it in high school geometry or trigonometry, and it’s applied in just about every field that involves some kind of math.
Sine waves are a graph of the Sine function, and given a basic form, as the input value changes, the output will oscillate between 1 and -1. Here’s what that looks like:
Note: You may notice that the sine wave perfectly maps to a circle of radius 1. That form of circle is called a Unit Circle. Understanding it is helpful but not necessary. As I said this is not a trig class. Moving on.