Higher Math - do you need it?

Some people will tell you it's required to make a game. It isn't.

Take it from me, you can dodge the math-monster for a long time. (amazing yet disturbing fact: the source to Dink Smallwood does not contain a single call to sin/cos, or use even a single instance of a float)

But in the end it will get you, and at some point you'll realize you could have saved a LOT of time by just biting the bullet and learning a few things. This applies to 2D as well as 3D.

Better to learn it sooner than later. I've learned to enjoy math study, it's actually pretty cool once you get going, think of it like a puzzle game. Math skills will carry over into every part of your life too, like accounting and tax preparation.

Don't try to learn math from a programming book. Especially not a game programming book! If you aren't given a solid foundation, quizzes and test problems to solve, you probably won't fully grasp or retain the knowledge.

Here are some great sites that have helped me out:

Math for Morons Like Us - (pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, pre-calc)

S.O.S. Math - (trig, algebra, calc)

Mrs. Carlton's Math Site - (algebra, has movies with her talking!)

Vector Math for 3D Computer Graphics - (fantastic vector tutorial)

Dave's Short Trig Course - (nice, uses applets and things)

Tutorials for the Calculus Phobe - (Calculus, uses speech and flash nicely)

Ask Dr. Math - (huge archive of searchable math questions and answers, good for finding practice problems, as the answers are very detailed and helpful)

comp.graphics.algorithms FAQ - (not a tutorial, but useful for finding a certain algorithm)

Mathematics at About.com - (hit and miss, some good links though)

and of course, Google Groups.