Circle line collision

General
1

Hi all,
Could one of you clever folks post up a short explanation of a circle line collision? I don’t need to know the intersection point just that a collision has occurred. I know it can be done using the physics API but would like to understand the process so I can take it elsewhere. Been trying for a few days now, not the easiest thing to get your head around.

Thanks in advance

2

Here’s a good description http://doswa.com/2009/07/13/circle-segment-intersectioncollision.html

3

I used something along these lines in my TouchLine game:

-- each item in self.enemies is a circle with a radius

   for i, v in ipairs(self.enemies) do
        -- do rough distance check to avoid doing the full collision check against every circle
        if v:left() < math.max(lineStart.x, lineEnd.x) and
           v:right() > math.min(lineStart.x, lineEnd.x) and
           v:top() > math.min(lineStart.y, lineEnd.y) and
           v:bottom() < math.max(lineStart.y, lineEnd.y) then
   
                A = v.position.x - lineStart.x
                B = v.position.y - lineStart.y
                C = lineEnd.x - lineStart.x
                D = lineEnd.y - lineStart.y
                local lineDist = math.abs(A * D - C * B) / math.sqrt(C * C + D * D)
                -- lineDist is a point to line distance - you'll have to compare it to the radius of your circle and width of your line. E.g.:

            if (lineDist) <= (lineWidth + v:radius()) then
                ... -- etc
4

Thanks to both of you for the reply.
@Nat been searching the net for two days and not come up with anything which explained it as well as the above link did, helped a lot.
Will post the code when I’ve tidied it up a bit

5

Here’s what I came up with, to check for collision compare the distance of the returned vector to the circle with the circles radius

function closestPoint(startPoint, endPoint, circle)
    local v1 = endPoint - startPoint
    local v2 = circle - startPoint
    local v1u = v1:normalize()
    local proj_len = v2:dot(v1u) -- projected length onto v1
    if proj_len <= 0 then 
        return  startPoint -- closest point 
    end
    if proj_len >= v1:len() then 
        return endPoint -- closest point
    end
    local proj_v = v1u * proj_len -- create vector from length along v1
    return proj_v + startPoint -- closest point
end

Thanks again for the help