Hi all, I'm currently in the middle of writing a game like Breakout, and I was wondering how I could properly bounce a ball off a surface.
I went with the naive way of rotating the velocity by 90 degrees, which was:
[vx, vy] -> [-vy, vx]
Which (unsurprisingly) didn't work so well. If I know the position and veocity of the ball, as well as the point the ball would hit (but is going to instead bounce off of) how can I bounce it off that point?
Constraints:
- I'm using integer math (No FP anywhere)
- All my surfaces are simple flat surfaces (Vertical, horizontal, or a block)
- I only want to bounce off in a 90 degree angle
- All collisions are purely elastic (This is breakout -- No need to friction, etc)
I don't need any language specific code. If anyone could provide a small, mathematical formula on how to properly do this that would work fine for me.
Thanks!