Book Image

Game Physics Cookbook

By : Gabor Szauer
Book Image

Game Physics Cookbook

By: Gabor Szauer

Overview of this book

Physics is really important for game programmers who want to add realism and functionality to their games. Collision detection in particular is a problem that affects all game developers, regardless of the platform, engine, or toolkit they use. This book will teach you the concepts and formulas behind collision detection. You will also be taught how to build a simple physics engine, where Rigid Body physics is the main focus, and learn about intersection algorithms for primitive shapes. You’ll begin by building a strong foundation in mathematics that will be used throughout the book. We’ll guide you through implementing 2D and 3D primitives and show you how to perform effective collision tests for them. We then pivot to one of the harder areas of game development—collision detection and resolution. Further on, you will learn what a Physics engine is, how to set up a game window, and how to implement rendering. We’ll explore advanced physics topics such as constraint solving. You’ll also find out how to implement a rudimentary physics engine, which you can use to build an Angry Birds type of game or a more advanced game. By the end of the book, you will have implemented all primitive and some advanced collision tests, and you will be able to read on geometry and linear Algebra formulas to take forward to your own games!
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
Game Physics Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Reviewer
Acknowledgements
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Closest point triangle


To find the closest point on a triangle to a test point, we must first create a plane out of the triangle. Three points that are not in a straight line are coplanar. This means we can create a plane out of any triangle. Once we have a plane, we get the closest point on the plane to the test point. Next, we check if this new closest point is inside the triangle. If it is, we return it as the closest point on the triangle.

If the closest point was not contained within the triangle, it's going to be on one of the triangle edges. We must construct a line out of each triangle edge and find the closest point on each line to the test point. We then return the closest point to the test point of the three closest points from the last step:

If a test point is outside of the triangle, the closest point is going to be on one of the edge lines of the triangle. We can calculate this closest point using the closest point to line formula.

Getting ready

Before implementing the ClosestPoint...