Spider Model Collision Response

Question

I am working with a tweak of the legs demo from open proccessing and attempting a simple evasion AI for my generated spider. The goal is for the AI spider to evade the player controlled one. My code:

float distance = sqrt((c2.currentX - creature.currentX)*(c2.currentX - creature.currentX)+(c2.currentY-creature.currentY)*(c2.currentY-creature.currentY));      

if (distance < c2.radius){
    c2.heading = atan(c2.heading);
    if(millis() - time >= wait){
        time = millis();
    }
}

This is located in my updated draw() andI have gotten a response from the AI, but the response is either the AI stands still or shoots off the screen. any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

If you want the AI spider to move directly away from the player, then calculating your heading like this may work better (although it's hard to say for sure without seeing all of your code):

c2.heading = atan2(c2.currentY - creature.currentY, c2.currentX - creature.currentX);

What that does is calculate the angle from creature to c2, and uses that as the heading. The result should be that c2 will move directly away from creature.

(I'm assuming that c2 is the AI spider here!)

As a side note, passing an angle into atan isn't likely to give you anything useful. It's designed to accept a trigonometric ratio as the parameter. atan2 is very similar, but it's often more useful as it does a little more of the work for you.