Well this is probably a really stupid question but i was doing pygame tutorial and i dont know what a vector is and they keep talking about them, there were special vector classes and things like that, im rather confused, so if someone could teach me what a vector is i would greatly appreciate that.

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Member Avatar for leegeorg07

id say the simplest way to describe them is that they are like coordinates and i would also say look at juzzy's link

Hmmm... i sortove get it, what is the point of having whole classes devoted to vectors though, it seems a bit over the top if its just the position and velocity of something, is there something deeper i do not understand here?

Member Avatar for leegeorg07

i guess its just to make it simpler

I think the idea is that you use the vector objects to transform other objects. The calculations would be done for you. Makes life a little less tedious.

Okay, so a vector is basically a direction of where to go with a velocity. I think... Okay, well i don't think there is more to be learnt so i will mark this as solved. Thanks for the help guys.

There is also pixel graphics and vector graphics. In the more common pixel graphics an image is made up of pixels with a given location and colour. In vector graphics the image is calculated using a series of mathematical operations. The advantage of vector graphics is that is smoothly scalable. Mind you that this is all mildly simplified.

One major application of vector graphics is in the movie animation industry. Also many electronic games us it. You can build for instance a landscape from a bunch of calculated coloured triangles.

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