Question

I’m making a galaxian-like shooter, and my enemy objects have a destination Vector which they travel towards, using this bit of code:

position.X -= (Motion.X / Magnitude) * Speed;
position.Y -= (Motion.Y / Magnitude) * Speed;

Motion is worked out by:

this.Motion = InitialPosition - Destination;

This makes them travel in a straight line towards the destination.

However, I want to make them a bit more interesting, and travel on a sin or cos wave, a bit like Galaxian did.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You might be better off defining a bezier curve for the movement function than simple functions like a sine wave. Galaxian certainly had more complex movements than that.

Here is a link to a primer on the maths of Bezier curves. It’s quite a long document, but does a good job of covering the maths involved, with plenty of examples.

Hope that helps inspire you.