Develop Reference

Translate ball according to the position of the bat it hits on in javascript?

//when bat touches the ball
ballDirection = { x: 1, y: -1 }
document.getElementById("ball").style.transform = document.getElementById("ball").style.transform + `translate(${20 * ballDirection.x}px, ${20 * ballDirection.y}px)`;
Above is my code for when bat touches the ball, I want the ball to move at an angle depending on where it hit the bat. But it's not working.
https://codepen.io/pelko/pen/MWBpNmL
Currently, it moves at an angle, but the output looks weird. How do I fix this issue?

It should probably be something like:
// when bat touches the ball
ballDirection = { x: ballDirection.x, y: -ballDirection.y }
document.getElementById("ball").style.transform = document.getElementById("ball").style.transform + `translate(${20 * ballDirection.x}px, ${20 * ballDirection.y}px)`;
I haven't looked closer at the rest of the code but it seems like the ballDirection calculated here is not kept after the encounter with the bat. There are probably some scope-related issues here to take care of.

Fabric.js Canvas - Make one type of object always stay below the other

I am working on a project in which I have to add rectangles and add triangles into those rectangles. I get the currently selected rectangle using this
const rect = canvas.getActiveObject().aCoords
Then I check if the mouse click is in the rectangle and if true I add a triangle.
const x = event.pointer.x
const y = event.pointer.y
if (rect.tl.x + 20 < x < rect.br.x - 20 && rect.tl.y + 20 < y < rect.br.y - 20) {
var points = regularPolygonPoints(3, 10);
var myPoly = new fabric.Polygon(points, {
stroke: 'red',
left: x,
top: y,
strokeWidth: 2,
strokeLineJoin: 'bevil'
}, false);
canvas.add(myPoly);
}
The problem is the whenever the rectangle is selected it comes on top of all the added triangles and only after I click away to deselect the rectangle, the triangles appear from beneath.
Please see the images below to better understand
Unselected
Selected rectangle coming on top of the triangles
What I want is that even if the rectangle is selected it always stays below the triangles.

http://fabricjs.com/docs/fabric.Canvas.html#preserveObjectStacking
Indicates whether objects should remain in current stack position when selected. When false objects are brought to top and rendered as part of the selection group
Set your canvas.preserveObjectStacking to true (it's false by default).
It will prevent the selection from bringing objects to the front, but keep in mind that this will rely on the order in which you've added your objects.

2D Rotated Rectangle Collision

I'm trying to test if two rectangle objects, one of which being rotated, are colliding in JavaScript.
Here's the screen shot of what I'm on about.
After hours of online research, I'm still wondering what's the best way (algorithm) to detect if the laser-ish lime object is overlapping with the blue square.
I'd appreciate any advice.

You can use the separating axis theorem for this. Basically, if 2 convex polygons (e.g. rectangles) do NOT intersect, then there should be at least one line (formed by the edges of one of the polygons extended to infinity) where all the corners from one polygon are on one side of it, and all the corners from the other polygon are on the other side.
You can test which side of a line a point is on using a dot product. One vector should be the normal to the line, and the other vector should be a vector from a point on the line to the point you are testing.
If you specify your rectangle corner vertices with a constant winding order (e.g. always clockwise or always counter clockwise) then you'll know the sign that the dot product should be when the points from the other rectangle are on the side of the line corresponding to the outside of the rectangle.
pseudo-code:
function hasSeparatingAxis(a, b)
{
// test each side of a in turn:
for(i = 0; i < a.side_count; i++)
{
normal_x = a.verts[(i+1)%a.side_count].y - a.verts[i].y;
normal_y = a.verts[i].x - a.verts[(i+1)%a.side_count].x;
for(j = 0; j < b.side_count; j++)
{
dot_product = ((b.vert[j].x - a.verts[i].x) * normal_x) +
((b.vert[j].y - a.verts[i].y) * normal_y);
if(dot_product <= 0.0) // change sign of test based on winding order
break;
if(j == b.side_count-1)
return true; // all dots were +ve, we found a separating axis
}
}
return false;
}
function intersects(a, b)
{
return !hasSeparatingAxis(a, b) && !hasSeparatingAxis(b, a);
}

mouse position to isometric tile including height

Struggeling translating the position of the mouse to the location of the tiles in my grid. When it's all flat, the math looks like this:
this.position.x = Math.floor(((pos.y - 240) / 24) + ((pos.x - 320) / 48));
this.position.y = Math.floor(((pos.y - 240) / 24) - ((pos.x - 320) / 48));
where pos.x and pos.y are the position of the mouse, 240 and 320 are the offset, 24 and 48 the size of the tile. Position then contains the grid coordinate of the tile I'm hovering over. This works reasonably well on a flat surface.
Now I'm adding height, which the math does not take into account.
This grid is a 2D grid containing noise, that's being translated to height and tile type. Height is really just an adjustment to the 'Y' position of the tile, so it's possible for two tiles to be drawn in the same spot.
I don't know how to determine which tile I'm hovering over.
edit:
Made some headway... Before, I was depending on the mouseover event to calculate grid position. I just changed this to do the calculation in the draw loop itself, and check if the coordinates are within the limits of the tile currently being drawn. creates some overhead tho, not sure if I'm super happy with it but I'll confirm if it works.
edit 2018:
I have no answer, but since this ha[sd] an open bounty, help yourself to some code and a demo
The grid itself is, simplified;
let grid = [[10,15],[12,23]];
which leads to a drawing like:
for (var i = 0; i < grid.length; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < grid[0].length; j++) {
let x = (j - i) * resourceWidth;
let y = ((i + j) * resourceHeight) + (grid[i][j] * -resourceHeight);
// the "+" bit is the adjustment for height according to perlin noise values
}
}
edit post-bounty:
See GIF. The accepted answer works. The delay is my fault, the screen doesn't update on mousemove (yet) and the frame rate is low-ish. It's clearly bringing back the right tile.
Source

Intresting task.
Lets try to simplify it - lets resolve this concrete case
Solution
Working version is here: https://github.com/amuzalevskiy/perlin-landscape (changes https://github.com/jorgt/perlin-landscape/pull/1 )
Explanation
First what came into mind is:
Just two steps:
find an vertical column, which matches some set of tiles
iterate tiles in set from bottom to top, checking if cursor is placed lower than top line
Step 1
We need two functions here:
Detects column:
function getColumn(mouseX, firstTileXShiftAtScreen, columnWidth) {
return (mouseX - firstTileXShiftAtScreen) / columnWidth;
}
Function which extracts an array of tiles which correspond to this column.
Rotate image 45 deg in mind. The red numbers are columnNo. 3 column is highlighted. X axis is horizontal
function tileExists(x, y, width, height) {
return x >= 0 & y >= 0 & x < width & y < height;
}
function getTilesInColumn(columnNo, width, height) {
let startTileX = 0, startTileY = 0;
let xShift = true;
for (let i = 0; i < columnNo; i++) {
if (tileExists(startTileX + 1, startTileY, width, height)) {
startTileX++;
} else {
if (xShift) {
xShift = false;
} else {
startTileY++;
}
}
}
let tilesInColumn = [];
while(tileExists(startTileX, startTileY, width, height)) {
tilesInColumn.push({x: startTileX, y: startTileY, isLeft: xShift});
if (xShift) {
startTileX--;
} else {
startTileY++;
}
xShift = !xShift;
}
return tilesInColumn;
}
Step 2
A list of tiles to check is ready. Now for each tile we need to find a top line. Also we have two types of tiles: left and right. We already stored this info during building matching tiles set.
function getTileYIncrementByTileZ(tileZ) {
// implement here
return 0;
}
function findExactTile(mouseX, mouseY, tilesInColumn, tiles2d,
firstTileXShiftAtScreen, firstTileYShiftAtScreenAt0Height,
tileWidth, tileHeight) {
// we built a set of tiles where bottom ones come first
// iterate tiles from bottom to top
for(var i = 0; i < tilesInColumn; i++) {
let tileInfo = tilesInColumn[i];
let lineAB = findABForTopLineOfTile(tileInfo.x, tileInfo.y, tiles2d[tileInfo.x][tileInfo.y],
tileInfo.isLeft, tileWidth, tileHeight);
if ((mouseY - firstTileYShiftAtScreenAt0Height) >
(mouseX - firstTileXShiftAtScreen)*lineAB.a + lineAB.b) {
// WOHOO !!!
return tileInfo;
}
}
}
function findABForTopLineOfTile(tileX, tileY, tileZ, isLeftTopLine, tileWidth, tileHeight) {
// find a top line ~~~ a,b
// y = a * x + b;
let a = tileWidth / tileHeight;
if (isLeftTopLine) {
a = -a;
}
let b = isLeftTopLine ?
tileY * 2 * tileHeight :
- (tileX + 1) * 2 * tileHeight;
b -= getTileYIncrementByTileZ(tileZ);
return {a: a, b: b};
}

Please don't judge me as I am not posting any code. I am just suggesting an algorithm that can solve it without high memory usage.
The Algorithm:
Actually to determine which tile is on mouse hover we don't need to check all the tiles. At first we think the surface is 2D and find which tile the mouse pointer goes over with the formula OP posted. This is the farthest probable tile mouse cursor can point at this cursor position.
This tile can receive mouse pointer if it's at 0 height, by checking it's current height we can verify if this is really at the height to receive pointer, we mark it and move forward.
Then we find the next probable tile which is closer to the screen by incrementing or decrementing x,y grid values depending on the cursor position.
Then we keep on moving forward in a zigzag fashion until we reach a tile which cannot receive pointer even if it is at it's maximum height.
When we reach this point the last tile found that were at a height to receive pointer is the tile that we are looking for.
In this case we only checked 8 tiles to determine which tile is currently receiving pointer. This is very memory efficient in comparison to checking all the tiles present in the grid and yields faster result.

One way to solve this would be to follow the ray that goes from the clicked pixel on the screen into the map. For that, just determine the camera position in relation to the map and the direction it is looking at:
const camPos = {x: -5, y: -5, z: -5}
const camDirection = { x: 1, y:1, z:1}
The next step is to get the touch Position in the 3D world. In this certain perspective that is quite simple:
const touchPos = {
x: camPos.x + touch.x / Math.sqrt(2),
y: camPos.y - touch.x / Math.sqrt(2),
z: camPos.z - touch.y / Math.sqrt(2)
};
Now you just need to follow the ray into the layer (scale the directions so that they are smaller than one of your tiles dimensions):
for(let delta = 0; delta < 100; delta++){
const x = touchPos.x + camDirection.x * delta;
const y = touchPos.y + camDirection.y * delta;
const z = touchPos.z + camDirection.z * delta;
Now just take the tile at xz and check if y is smaller than its height;
const absX = ~~( x / 24 );
const absZ = ~~( z / 24 );
if(tiles[absX][absZ].height >= y){
// hanfle the over event
}

I had same situation on a game. first I tried with mathematics, but when I found that the clients wants to change the map type every day, I changed the solution with some graphical solution and pass it to the designer of the team. I captured the mouse position by listening the SVG elements click.
the main graphic directly used to capture and translate the mouse position to my required pixel.
https://blog.lavrton.com/hit-region-detection-for-html5-canvas-and-how-to-listen-to-click-events-on-canvas-shapes-815034d7e9f8
https://code.sololearn.com/Wq2bwzSxSnjl/#html

Here is the grid input I would define for the sake of this discussion. The output should be some tile (coordinate_1, coordinate_2) based on visibility on the users screen of the mouse:
I can offer two solutions from different perspectives, but you will need to convert this back into your problem domain. The first methodology is based on coloring tiles and can be more useful if the map is changing dynamically. The second solution is based on drawing coordinate bounding boxes based on the fact that tiles closer to the viewer like (0, 0) can never be occluded by tiles behind it (1,1).
Approach 1: Transparently Colored Tiles
The first approach is based on drawing and elaborated on here. I must give the credit to #haldagan for a particularly beautiful solution. In summary it relies on drawing a perfectly opaque layer on top of the original canvas and coloring every tile with a different color. This top layer should be subject to the same height transformations as the underlying layer. When the mouse hovers over a particular layer you can detect the color through canvas and thus the tile itself. This is the solution I would probably go with and this seems to be a not so rare issue in computer visualization and graphics (finding positions in a 3d isometric world).
Approach 2: Finding the Bounding Tile
This is based on the conjecture that the "front" row can never be occluded by "back" rows behind it. Furthermore, "closer to the screen" tiles cannot be occluded by tiles "farther from the screen". To make precise the meaning of "front", "back", "closer to the screen" and "farther from the screen", take a look at the following:
.
Based on this principle the approach is to build a set of polygons for each tile. So firstly we determine the coordinates on the canvas of just box (0, 0) after height scaling. Note that the height scale operation is simply a trapezoid stretched vertically based on height.
Then we determine the coordinates on the canvas of boxes (1, 0), (0, 1), (1, 1) after height scaling (we would need to subtract anything from those polygons which overlap with the polygon (0, 0)).
Proceed to build each boxes bounding coordinates by subtracting any occlusions from polygons closer to the screen, to eventually get coordinates of polygons for all boxes.
With these coordinates and some care you can ultimately determine which tile is pointed to by a binary search style through overlapping polygons by searching through bottom rows up.

It also matters what else is on the screen. Maths attempts work if your tiles are pretty much uniform. However if you are displaying various objects and want the user to pick them, it is far easier to have a canvas-sized map of identifiers.
function poly(ctx){var a=arguments;ctx.beginPath();ctx.moveTo(a[1],a[2]);
for(var i=3;i<a.length;i+=2)ctx.lineTo(a[i],a[i+1]);ctx.closePath();ctx.fill();ctx.stroke();}
function circle(ctx,x,y,r){ctx.beginPath();ctx.arc(x,y,r,0,2*Math.PI);ctx.fill();ctx.stroke();}
function Tile(h,c,f){
var cnv=document.createElement("canvas");cnv.width=100;cnv.height=h;
var ctx=cnv.getContext("2d");ctx.lineWidth=3;ctx.lineStyle="black";
ctx.fillStyle=c;poly(ctx,2,h-50,50,h-75,98,h-50,50,h-25);
poly(ctx,50,h-25,2,h-50,2,h-25,50,h-2);
poly(ctx,50,h-25,98,h-50,98,h-25,50,h-2);
f(ctx);return ctx.getImageData(0,0,100,h);
}
function put(x,y,tile,image,id,map){
var iw=image.width,tw=tile.width,th=tile.height,bdat=image.data,fdat=tile.data;
for(var i=0;i<tw;i++)
for(var j=0;j<th;j++){
var ijtw4=(i+j*tw)*4,a=fdat[ijtw4+3];
if(a!==0){
var xiyjiw=x+i+(y+j)*iw;
for(var k=0;k<3;k++)bdat[xiyjiw*4+k]=(bdat[xiyjiw*4+k]*(255-a)+fdat[ijtw4+k]*a)/255;
bdat[xiyjiw*4+3]=255;
map[xiyjiw]=id;
}
}
}
var cleanimage;
var pickmap;
function startup(){
var water=Tile(77,"blue",function(){});
var field=Tile(77,"lime",function(){});
var tree=Tile(200,"lime",function(ctx){
ctx.fillStyle="brown";poly(ctx,50,50,70,150,30,150);
ctx.fillStyle="forestgreen";circle(ctx,60,40,30);circle(ctx,68,70,30);circle(ctx,32,60,30);
});
var sheep=Tile(200,"lime",function(ctx){
ctx.fillStyle="white";poly(ctx,25,155,25,100);poly(ctx,75,155,75,100);
circle(ctx,50,100,45);circle(ctx,50,80,30);
poly(ctx,40,70,35,80);poly(ctx,60,70,65,80);
});
var cnv=document.getElementById("scape");
cnv.width=500;cnv.height=400;
var ctx=cnv.getContext("2d");
cleanimage=ctx.getImageData(0,0,500,400);
pickmap=new Uint8Array(500*400);
var tiles=[water,field,tree,sheep];
var map=[[[0,0],[1,1],[1,1],[1,1],[1,1]],
[[0,0],[1,1],[1,2],[3,2],[1,1]],
[[0,0],[1,1],[2,2],[3,2],[1,1]],
[[0,0],[1,1],[1,1],[1,1],[1,1]],
[[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0]]];
for(var x=0;x<5;x++)
for(var y=0;y<5;y++){
var desc=map[y][x],tile=tiles[desc[0]];
put(200+x*50-y*50,200+x*25+y*25-tile.height-desc[1]*20,
tile,cleanimage,x+1+(y+1)*10,pickmap);
}
ctx.putImageData(cleanimage,0,0);
}
var mx,my,pick;
function mmove(event){
mx=Math.round(event.offsetX);
my=Math.round(event.offsetY);
if(mx>=0 && my>=0 && mx<cleanimage.width && my<cleanimage.height && pick!==pickmap[mx+my*cleanimage.width])
requestAnimationFrame(redraw);
}
function redraw(){
pick=pickmap[mx+my*cleanimage.width];
document.getElementById("pick").innerHTML=pick;
var ctx=document.getElementById("scape").getContext("2d");
ctx.putImageData(cleanimage,0,0);
if(pick!==0){
var temp=ctx.getImageData(0,0,cleanimage.width,cleanimage.height);
for(var i=0;i<pickmap.length;i++)
if(pickmap[i]===pick)
temp.data[i*4]=255;
ctx.putImageData(temp,0,0);
}
}
startup(); // in place of body.onload
<div id="pick">Move around</div>
<canvas id="scape" onmousemove="mmove(event)"></canvas>
Here the "id" is a simple x+1+(y+1)*10 (so it is nice when displayed) and fits into a byte (Uint8Array), which could go up to 15x15 display grid already, and there are wider types available too.
(Tried to draw it small, and it looked ok on the snippet editor screen but apparently it is still too large here)

Computer graphics is fun, right?
This is a special case of the more standard computational geometry "point location problem". You could also express it as a nearest neighbour search.
To make this look like a point location problem you just need to express your tiles as non-overlapping polygons in a 2D plane. If you want to keep your shapes in a 3D space (e.g. with a z buffer) this becomes the related "ray casting problem".
One source of good geometry algorithms is W. Randolf Franklin's website and turf.js contains an implementation of his PNPOLY algorithm.
For this special case we can be even faster than the general algorithms by treating our prior knowledge about the shape of the tiles as a coarse R-tree (a type of spatial index).

Measure distance between two HTML elements' centers

If I have HTML elements as follows:
<div id="x"></div>
<div id="y" style="margin-left:100px;"></div>
...how do I find the distance between them in pixels using JavaScript?

Get their positions, and use the Pythagorean Theorem to determine the distance between them...
function getPositionAtCenter(element) {
const {top, left, width, height} = element.getBoundingClientRect();
return {
x: left + width / 2,
y: top + height / 2
};
}
function getDistanceBetweenElements(a, b) {
const aPosition = getPositionAtCenter(a);
const bPosition = getPositionAtCenter(b);
return Math.hypot(aPosition.x - bPosition.x, aPosition.y - bPosition.y);
}
const distance = getDistanceBetweenElements(
document.getElementById("x"),
document.getElementById("y")
);
If you browser doesn't support Math.hypot(), you can use instead:
Math.sqrt(
Math.pow(aPosition.x - bPosition.x, 2) +
Math.pow(aPosition.y - bPosition.y, 2)
);
The Pythagorean Theorem relates to the relationship between the sides of a right-angled triangle.
The elements are plotted on a Cartesian coordinate system (with origin in top left), so you can imagine a right-angled triangle between the elements' coordinates (the unknown side is the hypotenuse).
You can modify the equation to get the value of c by getting the square root of the other side.
Then, you simply plug the values in (the x and y are the differences between the elements once their centers are determined) and you will find the length of the hypotenuse, which is the distance between the elements.

as far as div's are now empty, the basic idea is to measure the distance between their left top corners
distX = y.offsetLeft - x.offsetLeft;
distY = y.offsetTop - x.offsetTop;
distance = Math.sqrt(distX*distX + distY*distY);
alert(Math.floor(distance));
but you have to substract first div's height and width, if you put something inside. This method has some issues with support and border width of elements in different browsers.
anyway take a look at Fiddle
Note, that even with content (if you don't change it with css) divs will be 100% width, so if you want just to measure br's height use:
distance = = y.offsetTop - x.offsetTop;