How to make the same speed between sets of points? Using lerp - java

So I'm making a game where a unit follows a path set by the player. The way I code this is regularly setting points, and then making the unit follow through each of those points. Here's the code for the movement:
Vector2 goal = unitPath.getVertex().cpy();
if(alpha >= 1){
unitPath.nextVertex();
goal = unitPath.getVertex();
lastPosition = new Vector2 (getX() + getOriginX(), getY()+getOriginY());
alpha = 0;
}
System.out .println(alpha);
alpha += dt * speed;
Vector2 position = lastPosition.cpy();
if(goal != null){
position.lerp(goal, alpha);
this.centerAtPosition(position.x, position.y);
}
Here's the code for how each point is set:
Vector2 screenCoord = BattleScreen.getViewport().unproject(new Vector2(screenX, screenY));
if (new Vector2(screenCoord.x - currentVert.x, screenCoord.y - currentVert.y).len() > diagonal())
{
unitPath.addVertices(screenCoord.x, screenCoord.y);
currentVert = screenCoord.cpy();
}
The problem I was having was that between every two points, the speed with which the unit crosses the two points changes. This is because the speed of the mouse moving changes the distance between each point. I want to make it so that it has the same speed between each point.
So my question is two-fold:
how do I make the speed the same between each point?
is there a better of doing this then the way I'm doing right now?

Somehow I find your code hard to follow, but point is that you have your horizontal speed (i.e. Vx) and vertical speed (Vy). Vx^2 + Vy^2 must be equal to V^2, where V is total speed.
So after you calculate your speed you should "normalize" it. Calculate total speed you have and compare it to speed you want to achieve. I.e. you calculated total speed 4, but you want your units to move at speed 2, then it means that your units are moving twice faster so you have to divide your Vx and Vy speed components with 2.
Hope that this makes some sense to you.

Related

Shooting prediction algortithm in java

I have an issue in my current game dev hobby. I have two units, which are hostile in 2D space. One is shooting directly at the opponent, so if he moves it misses. But the other should predict it's opponents movement and shoot "ahead".
Let's assume first unit is A and second one is B. I can calculate their distances and I have their viewing angle and I have the speed at which they are moving. (player speed and bullet speed are different constants)
I tried with approximations to calculate distance between A and B and then use the Bv and orientation angle to calculate where the B will be in the next second and then scale that by the distance of two players divided by the bullet speed. But this is very inefficient and does not work well.
float distanceK = MathUtil.distance(unit.x, unit.y, opponent.x, opponent.y) / Constants.BULLET_VELOCITY;
float x = (float) (opponent.x + (Constants.UNIT_FORWARD_VELOCITY * distanceK * Math.cos(opponent.orientationAngle)));
float y = (float) (opponent.y + (Constants.UNIT_FORWARD_VELOCITY * distanceK * Math.sin(opponent.orientationAngle)));
float angleToRotate = MathUtil.angleBetweenUnitAndPoint(unit, x, y);
In the example above I then use angleToRotate variable to determine how much do I have to rotate to hit opponent, but the rotation too takes some time (54deg/s)
I would need a more optimal solution for this problem.
a) predict opponent movement when you are standing still.
b) predict opponent movement when you are moving.
You could use a vector representation of the space. So BA would represent the vector between A and B from A's point of view. You could then add the vector Bv of unit B's velocity. The resultant vector would be the vector between B and Bvp the predicted position of B at some time t in the future. As for a moving calculation, you'd need to also account for the movement vector of A.

Smooth moving LibGdx

I'm trying to make this thing:
When user press a key once, the sprite smoothly moves on some pixels. But it just "teleporting" to the position. Here is the code:
int co = 0;
Vector2 ppos=new Vector2(x,y);
if (Gdx.input.isKeyJustPressed(Keys.A)){
while (co < 33) {
batch.begin();
ppos.y += Gdx.graphics.getDeltaTime()*5;
Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
batch.draw(Splayer, ppos.x, ppos.y); //Splayer is a sprite
batch.end();
co++;
out(co+"");
}
}
What am I doing wrong?
I will deconstuct your code:
while (co < 33) {
So this will loop 33 times since you have co = 0 and increment co each loop.
ppos.y += Gdx.graphics.getDeltaTime()*5;
You increment the y position by your framerate * 5. so something like 5 * 0.02 * 33 is happening which makes 3.3. Nothing wrong with that but it is kinda unconventional to use a loop for that. Since doing y = 5 * framerate * 33 would be the same, easier and faster.
It depends on what you want to end up with but basically "we" do something like this.
//Have position variable
private Vector2 position;
//Have a speed variable
private float speed;
//direction variable
private Vector2 direction;
//have a velocity variable (direction * speed)
private Vector2 velocity;
velocity should be direction * speed and the velocity can then be added each frame to the position. let's say we want to move up. The direction would be (0,1) (the direction should never exceed the length of 1, if it does then normalize the vector direction.nor(). This will make sure it is 1 long so multiplying this will results in the same speed in any direction.
direction = new Vector2(0,1);
//an easy way to make it go 45 degree up/right would be
direction = new Vector2(1,1);
direction.nor(); //normalized to 1 long.
//now we can make the velocity
velocity = direction.cpy().scl(speed); //we copy the vector first so we are not changing the direction vector.
//If you want to have this framerate independent
velocity = direction.cpy().scl(speed * Gdx.graphics.getDeltatime);
Now we just add velocity to position. Basic math (1, 1) + (0, 1) = (1 ,2). Yes that is how simple Vectors are. original pos (0, 0)plus direction multiplied by speed+ (0 * 10, 1 * 10) = (0, 10)`. So to add velocity to position in code:
position.add(velocity);
batch.draw(textures, position.x, position.y);
This would be my way of doing it, I find this very easy.
What you are doing wrong is generating a new Vector each game loop when you press "A". You should think twice about having the new keyword in your loop. It is better the change you vector or reset it since it the old one will be lost in memory and needs to be collected. One Vector will not get you into trouble but 1 Texture that needs manual disposing will, learn it the right way.
Other then that, why have a variable named ppos? Why not just position or patientPosition or palaeoanthropologyPosition or whatever the "p" stands for. You are only required to type it once in most IDE because intellisense will pick it up. So make your and others life easier by clearly defining variables.
you should use Scene2D for smooth movement.

Rotate a triangle continuously

I have a float[] newCoords variable that has a size of 9. The first 3 entries represent one vertex, the next 3 represent the second vertex and the last 3 represent the last vertex.
I have some code that is supposed to rotate a triangle anywhere in space when I feed it the coordinates. It looks like this:
float s = (float) Math.sin(0.5);
float c = (float) Math.cos(0.5);
float[] centroid = getCentroid(newCoords);
newCoords[0] -= centroid[0];
newCoords[1] -= centroid[1];
newCoords[3] -= centroid[0];
newCoords[4] -= centroid[1];
newCoords[6] -= centroid[0];
newCoords[7] -= centroid[1];
newCoords[0] = (newCoords[0] * c) - (newCoords[1] * s);
newCoords[1] = (newCoords[0] * s) + (newCoords[1] * c);
newCoords[3] = (newCoords[3] * c) - (newCoords[4] * s);
newCoords[4] = (newCoords[3] * s) + (newCoords[4] * c);
newCoords[6] = (newCoords[6] * c) - (newCoords[7] * s);
newCoords[7] = (newCoords[6] * s) + (newCoords[7] * c);
newCoords[0] += centroid[0];
newCoords[1] += centroid[1];
newCoords[3] += centroid[0];
newCoords[4] += centroid[1];
newCoords[6] += centroid[0];
newCoords[7] += centroid[1];
The problem is, its not rotating it properly, the triangles are spinning and getting smaller and smaller until they disappear for some reason, can anyone see why this is happening?
EDIT: whoops, almost forgot, here is my getCentroid() method.
private float[] getCentroid(float[] p1) {
float[] newCoords = new float[] {(p1[0] + p1[3] + p1[6]) / 3.0f,
(p1[1] + p1[4] + p1[7]) / 3.0f, 0};
return newCoords;
}
I see two problems with your code. Both are fixed with a little change.
You try to apply a rotation operation, taking X and Y coordinates as input and having the new X and Y as output. For every vertex you rotate, you have two lines of code: the first computes the X, the second the Y coordinate. But when computing the Y coordinate, you use the already rotated X coordinate! That's wrong.
There is also a numerical problem. You reuse the old values again and again, resulting in a chain of rotation computations a value makes though, so the numerical errors sum up. Never rely on such computations to work as expected. Instead, you should work with the original values and increase the angle in each frame. This makes sure that each value only participated in a single rotation computation.
For fixing both problems, keep the original coordinates somewhere in your code, I call them coords, and rewrite the code such that you take that array as input (keep newCoords as the output). Increase the rotation angle in each frame to achieve a rotation animation.
This fixes both problems because you get rid of that chain and also you have different arrays for input and output in your rotation function.
Pseudo-code:
// initial:
angle = 0.0;
coords = (initial coordinates)
// per frame:
angle += 0.5;
newCoords = rotate(coords, angle);
draw(newCoords);
Also, please note that 0.5 is a large angle if you want to rotate by that angle frame by frame. The math functions expect angle in radians (not degrees), so you might want to use a lower value depending on what you want to visualize in particular.
You might wonder why I reuse the old angle in each frame, as according to the above mentioned problem 2., it should introduce numerical problems, since it's also a chain of computations. That's not a problem with the rotation angle, as a simple summation doesn't show such bad numerical errors you experience with applying rotations. Yet it has some problems, but they only show up at very long running times when the angle reaches some billions. The reason why such a summation in general is not that bad is because you're changing the variable in the same direction in each frame as well as a slightly off rotation angle isn't noticed very much by the user.

JAVA elastic collision of moving and non moving circles

I'm trying to write a java mobile application (J2ME) and I got stuck with a problem: in my project there are moving circles called shots, and non moving circles called orbs. When a shot hits an orb, it should bounce off by classical physical laws. However I couldn't find any algorithm of this sort.
The movement of a shot is described by velocity on axis x and y (pixels/update). all the information about the circles is known: their location, radius and the speed (on axis x and y) of the shot.
Note: the orb does not start moving after the collision, it stays at its place. The collision is an elastic collision between the two while the orb remains static
here is the collision solution method in class Shot:
public void collision(Orb o)
{
//the orb's center point
Point oc=new Point(o.getTopLeft().x+o.getWidth()/2,o.getTopLeft().y+o.getWidth()/2);
//the shot's center point
Point sc=new Point(topLeft.x+width/2,topLeft.y+width/2);
//variables vx and vy are the shot's velocity on axis x and y
if(oc.x==sc.x)
{
vy=-vy;
return ;
}
if(oc.y==sc.y)
{
vx=-vx;
return ;
}
// o.getWidth() returns the orb's width, width is the shot's width
double angle=0; //here should be some sort of calculation of the shot's angle
setAngle(angle);
}
public void setAngle(double angle)
{
double v=Math.sqrt(vx*vx+vy*vy);
vx=Math.cos(Math.toRadians(angle))*v;
vy=-Math.sin(Math.toRadians(angle))*v;
}
thanks in advance for all helpers
At the point of collision, momentum, angular momentum and energy are preserved. Set m1, m2 the masses of the disks, p1=(p1x,p1y), p2=(p2x,p2y) the positions of the centers of the disks at collition time, u1, u2 the velocities before and v1,v2 the velocities after collision. Then the conservation laws demand that
0 = m1*(u1-v1)+m2*(u2-v2)
0 = m1*cross(p1,u1-v1)+m2*cross(p2,u2-v2)
0 = m1*dot(u1-v1,u1+v1)+m2*dot(u2-v2,u2+v2)
Eliminate u2-v2 using the first equation
0 = m1*cross(p1-p2,u1-v1)
0 = m1*dot(u1-v1,u1+v1-u2-v2)
The first tells us that (u1-v1) and thus (u2-v2) is a multiple of (p1-p2), the impulse exchange is in the normal or radial direction, no tangential interaction. Conservation of impulse and energy now leads to a interaction constant a so that
u1-v1 = m2*a*(p1-p2)
u2-v2 = m1*a*(p2-p1)
0 = dot(m2*a*(p1-p2), 2*u1-m2*a*(p1-p2)-2*u2+m1*a*(p2-p1))
resulting in a condition for the non-zero interaction term a
2 * dot(p1-p2, u1-u2) = (m1+m2) * dot(p1-p2,p1-p2) * a
which can now be solved using the fraction
b = dot(p1-p2, u1-u2) / dot(p1-p2, p1-p2)
as
a = 2/(m1+m2) * b
v1 = u1 - 2 * m2/(m1+m2) * b * (p1-p2)
v2 = u2 - 2 * m1/(m1+m2) * b * (p2-p1)
To get the second disk stationary, set u2=0 and its mass m2 to be very large or infinite, then the second formula says v2=u2=0 and the first
v1 = u1 - 2 * dot(p1-p2, u1) / dot(p1-p2, p1-p2) * (p1-p2)
that is, v1 is the reflection of u1 on the plane that has (p1-p2) as its normal. Note that the point of collision is characterized by norm(p1-p2)=r1+r2 or
dot(p1-p2, p1-p2) = (r1+r2)^2
so that the denominator is already known from collision detection.
Per your code, oc{x,y} contains the center of the fixed disk or orb, sc{x,y} the center and {vx,vy} the velocity of the moving disk.
Compute dc={sc.x-oc.x, sc.y-oc.y} and dist2=dc.x*dc.x+dc.y*dc.y
1.a Check that sqrt(dist2) is sufficiently close to sc.radius+oc.radius. Common lore says that comparing the squares is more efficient. Fine-tune the location of the intersection point if dist2 is too small.
Compute dot = dc.x*vx+dcy*vy and dot = dot/dist2
Update vx = vx - 2*dot*dc.x, vy = vy - 2*dot*dc.y
The special cases are contained inside these formulas, e.g., for dc.y==0, that is, oc.y==sc.y one gets dot=vx/dc.x, so that vx=-vx, vy=vy results.
Considering that one circle is static I would say that including energy and momentum is redundant. The system's momentum will be preserved as long as the moving ball contains the same speed before and after the collision. Thus the only thing you need to change is the angle at which the ball is moving.
I know there's a lot of opinions against using trigonometric functions if you can solve the issue using vector math. However, once you know the contact point between the two circles, the trigonometric way of dealing with the issue is this simple:
dx = -dx; //Reverse direction
dy = -dy;
double speed = Math.sqrt(dx*dx + dy*dy);
double currentAngle = Math.atan2(dy, dx);
//The angle between the ball's center and the orbs center
double reflectionAngle = Math.atan2(oc.y - sc.y, oc.x - sc.x);
//The outcome of this "static" collision is just a angular reflection with preserved speed
double newAngle = 2*reflectionAngle - currentAngle;
dx = speed * Math.cos(newAngle); //Setting new velocity
dy = speed * Math.sin(newAngle);
Using the orb's coordinates in the calculation is an approximation that gains accuracy the closer your shot is to the actual impact point in time when this method is executed. Thus you might want to do one of the following:
Replace the orb's coordinates by the actual point of impact (a tad more accurate)
Replace the shot's coordinates by the position it has exactly when the impact will/did occur. This is the best scenario in respect to the outcome angle, however may lead to slight positional displacements compared to a fully realistic scenario.

Bring Ball To A Stop

I have the following methods in my program which keep a ball continuously bouncing. I have tried modifying but can't seem to get the ball to stop at the bottom of my GUI. My main goal is to have the methods simulate as if you were bouncing a real ball.
private void updateDelta() {
final int minimumMovement = 5;
final int maxExtra = 10;
deltaY = minimumMovement + (int) (Math.random() * maxExtra);
}
public void verticalBounce(Container container) {
// controls vertical ball motion
if (upDown) {
y += deltaY;
if (y >= getHeight()) {
upDown = false;
updateDelta();
}
} else {
y += -deltaY;
if (y <= 0) {
upDown = true;
updateDelta();
}
}
}
UPDATE:
Ball bounces and stops at the bottom of the gui.
public void verticalBounce(Container container) {
deltaY = deltaY - gravity;
y = y + deltaY;
if (y > getHeight()) {
y = getHeight(); // reset location
deltaY = (int) (deltaY * -0.9); // slows down ball
}
}
None of that code looks correct. You need to implement the equation(s) of rectilinear motion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_motion
The one you need is s = ut + 0.5 * a * t * t, where
s = distance
u = an initial velocity - regard as the speed at which it hits the ground
a = acceleration due to gravity (you can probably have this pretty arbitrary)
t = time
You reverse the sign of a on the way up.
To simulate lossy bouncing, reduce u by taking a certain factor of energy E out of the system:
new_u * new_u = (1 - E)u * u.
(This comes from the formula for the kinetic energy of a moving body).
I can see from your question that you are capable of implementing this, so I won't provide code; just the physics.
First, a bouncing ball doesn't have a random element in it. Its all determined by the forces acting on the ball and the speed and direction of the ball. If you add a little randomness, it may make it look a little more realistic because of things like wind and unbalance in the ball but its very little.
To program it, assume the ball gets shot up from the ground at some speed. You need to store:
Y = location in units above the ground. Start at 0.
deltaY = speed in units per time interval. Negative is down. Positive is up. Start at 10.
gravity = acceleration in units of change per time interval. Gravity is always negative and constant. Start with -2 and try some values.
Unless you want the ball to disappear off the screen as it reaches the top of the bounce, you will need to select a ceiling height. Say 100. (Which is best chosen to match your graphics area's height, though.)
So for every time interval/tick/loop you do the following:
Adjust for gravity by subtracting gravity from deltaY. (If the ball is moving down it will move faster. If its moving up, it will move slower.)
Move the ball by adding deltaY to Y.
Then you have to check: Did the ball hit the ground or the ceiling? Is Y greater than the ceiling value or less than the ground one (0).
If so, you have to bounce it by:
Move Y such that if it was X past the boundary (ground/ceiling) it becomes X within the boundary. (If Y = 110 and ceiling = 100, set Y to 90. If Y = -5, set it to +5.)
Negate deltaY. In a bounce the direction reverses. (deltaY = -deltaY)
Reduce deltaY by a percentage. Some energy is lost in the bounce so speed is slower after a bounce. (deltaY = deltaY * 0.90 or some other amount) #Bathsheba calls that removing energy from the system.
That's all there is to it. You have to fiddle with the numbers to make it take off at a reasonable speed. You have to adjust the time interval. You don't have to match real life. Just do what looks good.
As time goes by, the speed will reduce to 0.
(And despite what I said before, adding or subtracting a small random amount actually looks kind of cool.)
Your ball is bouncing randomly instead of slowly decreasing in velocity. You need to lower your velocity every bounce until the velocity is under minimumMovement then make the velocity 0 and stop bouncing.

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