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You're reading from  Game Physics Cookbook

Product typeBook
Published inMar 2017
Reading LevelIntermediate
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781787123663
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Gabor Szauer
Gabor Szauer
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Gabor Szauer

Gabor Szauer has been making games since 2010. He graduated from Full Sail University in 2010 with a bachelor's degree in game development. Gabor maintains an active Twitter presence, and maintains a programming-oriented game development blog. Gabor's previously published books are Game Physics Programming Cookbook and Lua Quick Start Guide, both published by Packt.
Read more about Gabor Szauer

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Point and line


To test if a point is on a line, or to get the point on a line closest to a test point, we first have to project the point onto the line. This projection will result in a floating point value, t. We use this new t value to find the distance of the point along the line segment using the distance(t) = start + t * (end - start)function. The start point of the line is at t = 0, the end point is at t = 1. We have to take two edge cases into account, when t is less than 0 or greater than 1:

Getting ready

We are going to implement two functions, one to get the point on a line closest to a test point and one to determine if a test point is on a line. The ClosestPoint function is going to project the test point onto the line and evaluate the parametric function, distance(t) = start + t * (end - start).

To determine if a test point is on a line segment, we still need the point on the segment closest to the test point. We are then able to measure the distance between the test point and...

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Game Physics Cookbook
Published in: Mar 2017Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781787123663

Author (1)

author image
Gabor Szauer

Gabor Szauer has been making games since 2010. He graduated from Full Sail University in 2010 with a bachelor's degree in game development. Gabor maintains an active Twitter presence, and maintains a programming-oriented game development blog. Gabor's previously published books are Game Physics Programming Cookbook and Lua Quick Start Guide, both published by Packt.
Read more about Gabor Szauer