I was recently asked for some pointers on how to get started with LINQ – and to maybe write a post about that. Using LINQ virtually every day I have to admit that it had not occurred to me that a C# programmer may not be familiar with it.
LINQ is a big topic, but this post is the first in a series to introduce the framework and its many uses – all from a game developer’s point of view.
Last time we talked about how we can approximate objects with complex shapes using simpler ones for our game’s physics simulation.
Further, we saw how we can use an often already existing feature: a skeleton for animating sprites – or vertices of a 3d-mesh – to make our collision shapes change position, and even size, as our object deforms.
Today I want to look at how knowing about the behaviour of CPUs – and especially their caches and memory – we can use simple optimisations to implement collisions with such objects very efficiently.
There is hardly a single game that does not need some form of collision between game objects. In many cases it is enough to approximate the shape of an object by a simpler one to simplify and speed up collision detection. It is for example very common – especially in 2D games – to use circles or boxes as colliding shapes.
Today I want to talk about how we can make use of collision code written for simple shapes like circles, and still end up with much more complex collision behaviour.