[Ntwiles]

Hey guys. I'm trying to wing 2d collision detection and besides the hell I'm having figuring out an efficient way to do it, I'm having trouble with the for loop indices.

Here's what I've got:

def checkhit():
    global bullets
    for i in bullets:
        xhit = intersectx(i,enemies)
        if xhit > 0:
            yhit = intersecty(i,enemies)
            if xhit == yhit:
                print "HIT"

def intersectx(bullet,obj):
    for i in range(bullet.xboundmin,bullet.xboundmax):
        for ii in obj:
            if i >= ii.xboundmin and i <= ii.xboundmax:    
                return ii
    return 0

def intersecty(bullet,obj):
    for i in range(bullet.yboundmin,bullet.yboundmax):
        for ii in obj:
            if i >= ii.yboundmin and i <= ii.yboundmax:     
                return ii
    return 0

My problem are the return ii lines. What I need is to return the index of the object, but ii is the object itself. Is there a way to get that number at all?

This post has been edited by Ntwiles: 10 January 2011 - 08:17 PM

[Nallo]

There are two ways when you need indexes in for loops. Loop explicitly over the indexes or use enumerate.

>>> obs = ["o1", "o2", "o3"]

>>> for index, ob in enumerate(obs):
...     print index, ob

0 o1
1 o2
2 o3

>>> for index in range(0, len(obs)):
...     print index, obs[i]

0 o1
1 o2
2 o3

[atraub]

Nallo's hit the nail on the head. The only thing I would point out is that

for index in range(0, len(obs)):

could be written as

for index in range(len(obs)):

because indices start as 0 by default.

I actually wrote a short article about looping through lists here here (shameless plug). Someone pointed out that I did not discuss enumerate, but I personally don't tend to use it because I feel that for loops require less thinking to translate into other languages. That being said, there is a minor (but measurable) speed increase in using enumerate as oppose range(len).

This post has been edited by atraub: 11 January 2011 - 07:39 AM

[Nallo]

Had some more time to look at the code and there is something I don't like:

line 11:

for i in range(bullet.xboundmin,bullet.xboundmax) ....

What if bullet is a small object (say 0.2 in both directions) and sits on position 3.5/3.5
then range(xboundmin, xboundmax) = range(3.3, 3.7) = [] and nothing is checked.

I would prefer to write a more general function that checks if bounding boxes of 2 objects intersect and works without relying on integer positions:

def intersects(obj1, obj2):
    """returns True if bounding boxes intersect, False otherwise"""
    #slightly cumbersomly written to drive my point home
    above = obj1.xboundmin > obj2.xboundmax
    below = obj1.xboundmax < obj2.xboundmin
    right = obj1.yboundmax < obj2.yboundmin
    left = obj1.yboundmin > obj2.yboundmax
    intersects = not above and not below and not right and not left
    return intersects

side note: Even if your version works for your problem ... this is faster than running a loop over all points in the bounding box.

This post has been edited by Nallo: 11 January 2011 - 09:36 AM

[Ntwiles]

Thanks for the great info guys. And thank you very much for that function Nallo. I couldn't for the life of me figure out a way to do check the bounding boxes without loops.