Develop Reference

Shooting a bullet from the direction that a rectangle is facing

I have a Rectangle object that is placed on the screen and rendered using paintComponent.
I also have a rotation variable that determines the rotation of the object (using right and left keys to rotate) and repaints the object on the screen using Affine Transform.
In the keyPressed method, I have this which allows me to shoot bullets:
else if(key == KeyEvent.VK_SPACE) {
Bullet b = new Bullet(handler, player.x + 10, player.y - 10, ID.Bullet);
handler.addObject(b);
b.setDY(-3*Math.cos(player.rotation));
b.setDX(3*Math.sin(player.rotation));
}
If you see where I create a new bullet, in the second line, the second and third arguments in the new Bullet() are what determines where the bullets are created. Currently they just shoot from the same position on the rectangle regardless of the rotation.
I have failed at allowing the player to shoot a bullet from the direction they are facing, so if anyone has any suggestions that would be very helpful.

So basically you are trying to find the offset Vector from the player's position.
Let's assume, that you have the offset Vector, when you haven't rotated the object.
Then your task would be to rotate the given Vector by the rotation variable.
To do this we first need to look into geometry a bit. Let's think of a 2d-Vector as a triangle, that we can split into it's x and y components. We know, that the rotated Vector should have the same hypothenuse length as the original offset or in other terms the same magnitude.
This means that:
x₀² + y₀² = x₁² + y₁²
Since:
x² + y² = Vector-Magnitude
Your rotation variable keeps track of the inner angle of that "triangle vector" and hence we can describe the lengths as:
x = sin(rotation) * Vector Magnitude
y = cos(rotation) * Vector Magnitude
Now the only thing left to do is evalute those values. To do that, let us jump into the code, shall we?
float magnitude = offset.x*offset.x + offset.y*offset.y;
float x = Math.sin(rotation) * magnitude;
float y = Math.cos(rotation) * magnitude;
Bullet b = new Bullet(handler, player.x + x, player.y + y, ID.Bullet);
possible Errors and fixes
Make sure that you have the correct angle-format. The Java-Math class uses radiens for trigonometric methods.
There could be a constant rotation deviation, depending on what exactly you want your result to look like. This is a rather easy fix, as you just have to add this constant to the rotation variable. In unlikely instances you maybe also need to negate the rotation variable simply by using -rotation in the places I used rotation in my code.

If you know the rotation angle and the width of the rectangle then use this information to rotate the start position of the bullet too. For example to let the start position at the right side:
x = rectMiddleX + width/2 * cos(angle)
y = rectMiddleY + width/2 * sin(angle)
If angle is 0 it will start at the right side
else if(key == KeyEvent.VK_SPACE) {
Bullet b = new Bullet(handler, player.x + width/2 * cos(player.rotation), player.y - width/2 * sin(player.rotation), ID.Bullet);
//if player.x/y is in corner, add width/2 / height/2
handler.addObject(b);
b.setDY(-3*Math.cos(player.rotation));
b.setDX(3*Math.sin(player.rotation));
}

Move rectangle by touching the screen

I want to move blocks with different x-positions without changing their shape by reducing the x-position.
I have tried to run the following code, but it seems like the blocks move to a tow position way to fast (correct potion and other i can't see where).
downBlocks=new Arraylist<Rectangle>;
for (DownBlocks downBlocks:getBlocks()){
if(Gdx.input.isTouched()) {
Vector3 touchPos = new Vector3();
touchPos.set(Gdx.input.getX(), Gdx.input.getY(), 0);
camera.unproject(touchPos);
downBlocks.x = (int) touchPos.x - downBlocks.x;
}
}

To do a drag, you need to remember the point where the finger last touched the screen so you can get a finger delta. And as a side note, avoid putting code inside your loop iteration if it only needs to be called once. It's wasteful to unproject the screen's touch point over and over for every one of your DownBlocks.
static final Vector3 VEC = new Vector3(); // reusuable static member to avoid GC churn
private float lastX; //member variable for tracking finger movement
//In your game logic:
if (Gdx.input.isTouching()){
VEC.set(Gdx.input.getX(), Gdx.input.getY(), 0);
camera.unproject(VEC);
}
if (Gdx.input.justTouched())
lastX = VEC.x; //starting point of drag
else if (Gdx.input.isTouching()){ // dragging
float deltaX = VEC.x - lastX; // how much finger has moved this frame
lastX = VEC.x; // for next frame
// Since you're working with integer units, you can round position
int blockDelta = (int)Math.round(deltaX);
for (DownBlocks downBlock : getBlocks()){
downBlock.x += blockDelta;
}
}
I don't recommend using integer units for your coordinates, though. If you are doing pixel art, then I recommend using floats for storing coordinates, and rounding off the coordinates only when drawing. That will reduce jerky-looking movement. If you are not using pixel art, I would just use float coordinates all the way. Here's a good article to help understand units.

Why does my 1D gravity simulation not act like a pendulum?

My gravity simulation acts more like a gravity slingshot. Once the two bodies pass over each other, they accelerate far more than they decelerate on the other side. It's not balanced. It won't oscillate around an attractor.
How do other gravity simulators get around it? example: http://www.testtubegames.com/gravity.html, if you create 2 bodies they will just oscillate back and forth, not drifting any further apart than their original distance even though they move through each other as in my example.
That's how it should be. But in my case, as soon as they get close they just shoot away from each other to the edges of the imaginary galaxy never to come back for a gazillion years.
edit: Here is a video of the bug https://imgur.com/PhhRhP7
Here is a minimal test case to run in processing.
//Constants:
float v;
int unit = 1; //1 pixel = 1 meter
float x;
float y;
float alx;
float aly;
float g = 6.67408 * pow(10, -11) * sq(unit); //g constant
float m1 = (1 * pow(10, 15)); // attractor mass
float m2 = 1; //object mass
void setup() {
size (200,200);
a = 0;
v = 0;
x = width/2; // object x
y = 0; // object y
alx = width/2; //attractor x
aly = height/2; //attractor y
}
void draw() {
background(0);
getAcc();
applyAcc();
fill(0,255,0);
ellipse(x, y, 10, 10); //object
fill(255,0,0);
ellipse(alx, aly, 10, 10); //attractor
}
void applyAcc() {
a = getAcc();
v += a * (1/frameRate); //add acceleration to velocity
y += v * (1/frameRate); //add velocity to Y
a = 0;
}
float getAcc() {
float a = 0;
float d = dist(x, y, alx, aly); //distance to attractor
float gravity = (g * m1 * m2)/sq(d); //gforce
a += gravity/m2;
if (y > aly){
a *= -1;}
return a;
}

Your distance doesn't include width of the object, so the objects effectively occupy the same space at the same time.
The way to "cap gravity" as suggested above is add a normal force when the outer edges touch, if it's a physical simulation.

You should get into the habit of debugging your code. Which line of code is behaving differently from what you expected?
For example, if I were you I would start by printing out the value of gravity every time you calculate it:
float gravity = (g * m1 * m2)/sq(d); //gforce
println(gravity);
You'll notice that your gravity value skyrockets as your circles get closer to each other. And this makes sense, because you're dividing by sq(d). Ad d gets smaller, your gravity increases.
You could simply cap your gravity value so it doesn't go off the charts anymore:
float gravity = (g * m1 * m2)/sq(d);
if(gravity > 100){
gravity = 100;
}
Alternatively you could cap d so it never goes below a certain value, but the result is the same.
In the end you'll find that this is not going to be as easy as you expected. You're going to have to tune the parameters quite a bit so your simulation works how you want.

Working demo here: https://beta.observablehq.com/#shaunlebron/1d-gravity
I followed the solution posted by the author of the sim that inspired this question here:
-First off, shrinking the timestep is always helpful. My simulation runs, as a baseline, about 40 ‘steps’ per frame, and 30 frames per second.
-To deal with the exact issue you talk about, I think modeling the bodies not as pure point masses - but rather spherical masses with a certain radius will be vital. That prevents the force of gravity from diverging to infinity. So, for instance, if you drop an asteroid into a star in my simulation (with collisions turned off), the force of gravity will increase as the asteroid gets closer, up until it reaches the surface of the star, at which point the force will begin to decrease. And the moment it’s at the center of the star (or nearby), the force will be zero (or nearly zero) - instead of near-infinite.
In my demo, I just completed turned off gravity when two objects are close enough together. Seems to work well enough.

Achieve parallax effect in libGDX game

I'm working in a game with some friends in which we have a large horizontal world and a OrthographicCamera that shows only 1/3 of it. This camera it's moved when the horizontal position of the player change so the camera only move to the left and to the right.
Some of the objects showed in the game are near the player point-of-view but others are far away (for example, islands). With this in consideration, we cannot set fixed positions for elements and move only the camera. We need to achieve a parallax effect taking in consideration the distance of the elements.
Here is a simple image to explain it better:
The viewport to the left shows 3 objects of the game. The green one is near the player, the red ellipse is far and the yellow one is in the middle. In the viewport to the right the camera has been moved to the right so all the objects disappear to the left. The thing is that the relative movement of the green rectangle is greater than the movement of the yellow. In the same way, movement of yellow object is greater than red object movement.
I created all my assets scaled taking in consideration how far they are but now, how can I simulate this perspective using libGDX? Is there any class to do it? If I have to set elements position in each iteration, how could I calculate the right position?

Note that the example below is not tested as I am just recalling how I did it. The idea is simple - create layers with an extra layer for each with initial positions and velocity and move them. If a layer goes off the edge, put another one (that is why we create an extra layer) at the opposite edge.
Say you have a parallax object that takes initial positions, size, and velocity-
public class Parallax extends DynamicGameObject {
public float width, height; // Use setter/getter if you prefer
public Parallax(float x, float y, float width, float height, float velocityX, float velocityY) {
super(x, y, width, height);
velocity.set(velocityX, velocityY);
this.width = width;
this.height = height;
}
public void update(float deltaTime) {
position.add(velocity.x * deltaTime, velocity.y * deltaTime);
}
public void setPosition(float x, float y) {
position.set(x, y);
}
}
DynamicGameObject is taken from SuperJumper demo-
public class DynamicGameObject extends GameObject {
public final Vector2 velocity;
public final Vector2 accel;
public DynamicGameObject(float x, float y, float width, float height) {
super(x, y, width, height);
velocity = new Vector2();
accel = new Vector2();
}
}
GameObject as well-
public class GameObject {
public final Vector2 position;
public final Rectangle bounds;
public GameObject(float x, float y, float width, float height) {
this.position = new Vector2(x,y);
this.bounds = new Rectangle(x - width/2f, y - height/2f, width, height);
}
}
Say we have two layers - one in front and the other goes at back. We have one texture for each. Each texture fills the entire screen. We create two instances for each layer so that when one texture starts going off the screen, the other shows up at the edge to fill the gap. If you have smaller textures, you need to determine first how many textures you need to fill the screen and then create layers with one extra to fill the gap in between.
We can create an array of parallax layers during world creation-
Array<Parallax> parallaxList = new Array<Parallax>(4);
We can create the layers like this-
// Back
/* First parallax for back layer is at 0 x-axis. If you want to move the texture from right to left, the value of BACK_VELOCITY_X should be negative. You can experiment with velocity value for desire pace of movement. We do not want our layer to move on y-axis. Hence, it is set to 0. */
parallaxList.add(new Parallax(0, BACK_TEXTURE_HEIGHT, BACK_TEXTURE_WIDTH, BACK_TEXTURE_HEIGHT, BACK_VELOCITY_X, 0));
/* This one is also for back layer but it is positioned at the right edge of the layer above*/
parallaxList.add(new Parallax(BACK_TEXTURE_WIDTH, BACK_TEXTURE_HEIGHT, BACK_TEXTURE_WIDTH, BACK_TEXTURE_HEIGHT, SOME_VELOCITY_X, 0));
// Front
parallaxList.add(new Parallax(0, 0, FRONT_TEXTURE_WIDTH, FRONT_TEXTURE_HEIGHT, FRONT_VELOCITY_X, 0));
parallaxList.add(new Parallax(FRONT_TEXTURE_WIDTH, 0, FRONT_TEXTURE_WIDTH, FRONT_TEXTURE_HEIGHT, FRONT_VELOCITY_X, 0));
We update the layers on an update call in each frame-
// In our example, TOTAL_LAYERS is 4
for (int i = 0; i < TOTAL_LAYERS; i++) {
int tmpInt;
Parallax parallax = parallaxList.get(i);
parallax.update(deltaTime);
// If one layer is off the edge, put it at the right of the next one
// In this example, layers are moving from right to left
if (parallax.position.x <= -parallax.width) {
// We know that parallaxList's indexes 0 and 1 hold the back layers
// and indexes 2 and 3 have the front layers. You can add additional
// parameters in Parallax class to indicate a group so that you do not
// have to determine the group in dirty way like this
if(i == 0){
tmpInt = 1;
} else if(i == 1) {
tmpInt = 0;
} else if(i == 2) {
tmpInt = 3;
} else {
tmpInt = 2;
}
parallax.setPosition(parallaxList.get(tmpInt).position.x + parallax.width, parallax.position.y);
}
}
You can use an OrthographicCamera and a SpriteBatch to draw the parallax layers. You can actually use the game camera you have but I think using a separate camera is much cleaner. Anyways, parallax textures are usually big enough to be batched in a separate call so using the game camera most probably will not save you a draw call.

Libgdx first person camera controll

I just started playing arround with 3D in libgdx. I allready know how to draw basic Models and i tryed to play arround with the CameraController. Now i want to create a FirstPersonCamera or FirstPersonCameraController. I thought about extending PerspectiveCamera and adding a MyMovingObject target to it. The MyMovingObject would hold a x, y, z position, where y is a constant value, cause i can't move up/down at the moment. So my movement is basicly in 2D. The MyMovingObject would also store the left/right rotation, needed for its moving direction/ xSpeed, zSpeed. But the Player should also be able to look up and down, and this up/down rotation is not really needed for the MyMovingObject, as it only changes the view and no other properties. So i am not sure if i go the right way.
I want to be able to go forward, left, right, backward by using W,A,S,D and rotate left right by using the mouse. Also i want to look up and down by using the mouse, like in most First Person games.
Should i use another way, not creating my own camera by extending PerspectiveCamera?
Or is this approach good and i just have to store the up/down rotation in the MyMovingObject to, also if it is only needed for the view?
Or would it be better to controll the camera with W,A,S,D and mouse and update the MyMovingObjects position, depending on cameras position and rotation?
I hope you understand what I mean. It seems a bit complicated to explain it (at least for me).
EDIT: I am now using Vector3 direction, Vector3 position and Vector3 size for my NPCs and the player. I calculate the speed by doing: xSpeed = direction.x / (direction.x + direction.z) * speed; the same for zSpeed. By doing this i "filter" the y value out of it and i get only the percent of x and y. The only problem is, that when i look straight up x and z are 0. I could fix this by using an UpVecotr, which gets rotated when i do a "Pitch-rotation". But how do i rotate him? I need to rotate it arround the sideway Vector. Thanks
EDIT: The rotation and movement work now (see my answer), but i have really big problems with the limitation of the "Pitch-rotation". I am using: if (direction.y < 0.9 && angle > 1) doPitchRotation(); else if (direction.y > -0.9 && angle < 1) doPitchRotation(); so if i rotate down and i still look down at least at -0.9 y it just does not perform the rotation. But what really happens: I rotates to - 0.9 then it rotates arround the Y-Axis and at the other side it rotates up, even if i move my mous down. Can you explain why? Why does the Y-Axis flip when i turn arround by looking down?
EDIT: It works now. It seems like my upVector got some wrong values sometimes. For landbased cams you can also use crossproduct of Y-Axis and direction Vector. No need for upVector.

Hey thanks for sharing this link. I found it very useful.
Here's my code on rotating a land based camera and it seems to work without problems.
private int mouseX = 0;
private int mouseY = 0;
private float rotSpeed = 0.2f;
#Override
public boolean mouseMoved(int screenX, int screenY) {
int magX = Math.abs(mouseX - screenX);
int magY = Math.abs(mouseY - screenY);
if (mouseX > screenX) {
cam.rotate(Vector3.Y, 1 * magX * rotSpeed);
cam.update();
}
if (mouseX < screenX) {
cam.rotate(Vector3.Y, -1 * magX * rotSpeed);
cam.update();
}
if (mouseY < screenY) {
if (cam.direction.y > -0.965)
cam.rotate(cam.direction.cpy().crs(Vector3.Y), -1 * magY * rotSpeed);
cam.update();
}
if (mouseY > screenY) {
if (cam.direction.y < 0.965)
cam.rotate(cam.direction.cpy().crs(Vector3.Y), 1 * magY * rotSpeed);
cam.update();
}
mouseX = screenX;
mouseY = screenY;
return false;
}
This works for landbased cameras. If you want to make a flightcontroll camera, you have to do a pitch rotation arround the cam.direction.crs(cam.up). Instead of using the Vector3.cpy() i would store a Vector3 help, which gets those temporary values, because Vector3.cpy() creates a new Vector3 and this operation is performed every render loop.
For flightcontroll cameras you also need to add a roll rotation and do the yaw rotation arround the cam.up Vector.

This article is really helpful in my opinion. I have found a solution which should work, but i haven't tryed it yet. My MovingObjects all have a Vector3 position, Vector3 direction, Vector3 size and Vecotr3 upVector. The Player class extends this MovingObject class and adds Mouse and Keycontroll to the movement.
In the MovingObject class i have the moethods:
rotateYaw(float degrees): rotates the Vector3 direction arround the Y-Axis by the given degrees (libgdx has a rotate function for Vector3)--> Simple
rotatePitch(float degrees): rotates the Vector3 direction arround the: direction.cross(Vector3.Y), which is the rotated side Vector of your MovingObject, by the given degrees. Also a Pitch-Rotation has to rotate the upVector, so you rotate the upVector arround the same axis, by the given degrees. As soon as you understand this it is simple.
move(delta) moves your MovingObject in x,z direction by doing:
if (direction.y == 1) {
// You are looking straight up, no x,z direction, move in the opposite
// direction of upVector
xSpeed = upVector.x / (Math.abs(upVetor.x) + Math.abs(upVector.z)) * (-speed);
zSpeed = upVector.z / (Math.abs(upVetor.x) + Math.abs(upVector.z)) * (-speed);
position.add(xSpeed * delta, 0, ySpeed * delta);
} else if (direction.y == -1) {
// You are looking straight down, no x,z direction, move in the direction of
// upVector
xSpeed = upVector.x / (Math.abs(upVetor.x) + Math.abs(upVector.z)) * speed;
zSpeed = upVector.z / (Math.abs(upVetor.x) + Math.abs(upVector.z)) * speed;
position.add(xSpeed * delta, 0, ySpeed * delta);
} else {
// You are not looking straight up or down, so you have x,z direction. Use
// that.
xSpeed = direction.x / (Math.abs(direction.x) + Math.abs(direction.z)) * speed;
zSpeed = direction.z / (Math.abs(direction.x) + Math.abs(direction.z)) * speed;
position.add(xSpeed * delta, 0, ySpeed * delta);
}
I did not test this until now, but i think it should work. Note, that in the Pitch-rotation you should also limit it to straight up/ straight down. Do this by checking the signum of x and z. If they change while you are doing a Pitch-rotation you rotated over 90 degrees.
I am stil waiting for other answers and if i am wrong please correct me!
EDIT: I tested it. It works like this, but there are a few things to take care of:
direction.cross(upVector) changes the direction Vector. So store that data somewhere first! After using it reset the direction Vector.
The Pitch limitation has a problem: If you controll signum change, as i suggested the following happens: you look straight up, signum x and signum z are 0. You look down, signum changes and your action (limiting) starts. So take care that you also check, if it is not zero.
I stil don't know how to do the pitch limitation and i edit my question to explain my issue.
Think about normalizing your direction and upVector whenever you change something!
I think this should work pretty good. If you have any improvements let me know and i will update this here. If you have another solution please add an answer! Thanks

I know that this question already has good answers. But I had some issues with the selected answer. And I just want to help someone who is looking for the same solution.
I noticed some strange behaviour with the selected answer. I doesn't keep the Y exis as up. Which is of course very important on a fps. So this one is not perfect but I wanted to put this here.
// put into the create() method.
Gdx.input.setInputProcessor(new InputProcessor() {
private int dragX, dragY;
float rotateSpeed = 0.2f;
// dont' forget to override other methods.
#Override
public boolean mouseMoved(int screenX, int screenY) {
Vector3 direction = cam.direction.cpy();
// rotating on the y axis
float x = dragX -screenX;
// change this Vector3.y with cam.up if you have a dynamic up.
cam.rotate(Vector3.Y,x * rotateSpeed);
// rotating on the x and z axis is different
float y = (float) Math.sin( (double)(dragY -screenY)/180f);
if (Math.abs(cam.direction.y + y * (rotateSpeed*5.0f))< 0.9) {
cam.direction.y += y * (rotateSpeed*5.0f) ;
}
cam.update();
dragX = screenX;
dragY = screenY;
return true;
}
});
NOTE: Don't use any camera controllers.
NOTE2: This might come handy: Gdx.input.setCursorCatched(true);
EDIT: I just wanted to share the walking function I use to change position of the camera with wasd keys. When W key is down the forward is true. And when the key is up forward is false. Other directions have the same principle. To detect the key down and up, please use the InputProcessor in the above code.
This creates movement in the two dimensional space (X-Z axises). The direction of the camera will not change the direction of the movement as we are eliminating the Y axis. of the direction.
One must now even if camera is directed to the sky (at a non 90 degree angle with the ground), the length of the direction vector is not fixed to 1.0f. So there will not be any loss of movement speed.
To test this I rotated camera up and down (moved the mouse forward and backward) and the x and z values of the direction vector didn't change. So when the y axis of the direction vector is eliminated, we have a 2d direction vector which doesn't effected by the Y angle of the camera.
private void walking(float timeElapsed) {
float speed = movementSpeed;
if ((forward | back) & (right | left)) {
speed /= Math.sqrt(2);
}
System.out.println(speed);
if (forward) {
Vector3 v = cam.direction.cpy();
v.y = 0f;
v.x *= speed * timeElapsed;
v.z *= speed * timeElapsed;
cam.translate(v);
cam.update();
}
if (back) {
Vector3 v = cam.direction.cpy();
v.y = 0f;
v.x = -v.x;
v.z = -v.z;
v.x *= speed * timeElapsed;
v.z *= speed * timeElapsed;
cam.translate(v);
cam.update();
}
if (left) {
Vector3 v = cam.direction.cpy();
v.y = 0f;
v.rotate(Vector3.Y, 90);
v.x *= speed * timeElapsed;
v.z *= speed * timeElapsed;
cam.translate(v);
cam.update();
}
if (right) {
Vector3 v = cam.direction.cpy();
v.y = 0f;
v.rotate(Vector3.Y, -90);
v.x *= speed * timeElapsed;
v.z *= speed * timeElapsed;
cam.translate(v);
cam.update();
}
}