How to implement curved movement while tracking the appropriate angle?
- by Vexille
I'm currently coding a 2D top-down car game which will be turn-based. And since it's turn-based, the cars won't be controlled directly (i.e. with a simple velocity vector that adjusts its angle when the player wants to turn), but instead it's movement path has to be planned beforehand, and then the car needs to follow the path when the turn ends (think Steambirds).
This question has some interesting information, but its focus is on homing-missile behaviour, which I kinda had figured out, but doesn't really apply to my case, I think, since I need to show a preview of the path when the player is planning his turn, then have the car follow that path. In that same question, there's an excellent answer by Andrew Russel which mentions Equations of Motion and Bézier's Curve. Some of his other suggestions of implementation are specific to XNA though, so they don't help much (I'm using Marmalade SDK).
If I assume Bézier's Curve as the solution of choice, I'm left with one specific problem: I'll have the car's position (the first endpoint) and the target/final position (the last endpoint), but what should I use as the control point (assuming a square/quadratic curve)?
And whether I use Bézier's Curve or another parametric equation, I'd still be left with another issue: the car can't just follow the curve, it must turn (i.e. adjust its angle) accordingly. So how can I figure out which way the car should be pointing to at any given point in the curve?
