Pygame - CollideRect - But How Do They Collide?

Question

I'm having some trouble figuring out how I can handle collisions that are specifically colliding on the top or bottom a rect. How can specify those collisions?

Here's a little code snippet to give you an idea of my approach. As it is now it doesn't matter where it collides.

# the ball has hit one of the paddles. send it back in another direction.
    if paddleRect.colliderect(ballRect) or paddle2Rect.colliderect(ballRect):
        ballHitPaddle.play()
        if directionOfBall == 'upleft':
            directionOfBall = 'upright'
        elif directionOfBall == 'upright':
            directionOfBall = 'upleft'
        elif directionOfBall == 'downleft':
            directionOfBall = 'downright'
        elif directionOfBall == 'downright':
            directionOfBall = 'downleft'

Thanks in advance.

**EDIT**

Paddle rect:

 top
 ____
|    |
|    |
|    | Sides
|    |
 ---- 
bottom

I need to know if the ball has hit either the top or the bottom.

possible duplicate of 2d Collision detecton axis aligned boxes — Sean Middleditch, Sep 03 '13 at 20:56
When two rects are overlapping there is no directionality to their state of collision, they are just ... colliding ... Do you mean if you have two rects that are moving, how to tell whether or not they collided against a given edge? — Mokosha, Sep 04 '13 at 00:46
@sean No. It's not a duplicate. My question is about Pygame specifically, I'm not making a physics engine myself. — Chakotay, Sep 05 '13 at 15:23
@Mokosha Well they are moving...but I need to know if the one rect (the ball) has collided with the other rect's (the paddle) top or botom. Look at my edit above. — Chakotay, Sep 05 '13 at 15:24

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 16 '20 at 10:15

Makeup of angles:

Basically you have to look at the angles between the center of the rectangle you are using for a paddle and the center of the rectangle of the ball (can also be a point since we collapse the ball rectangle into a point anyways).

enter image description here

The angle between the center points is then compared to the quadrants given by the corner points of the paddle (this gives left, right, up, down). The following program does just that with a bit of normalization to make lookup in the array easier.

Test program

The part relevant to your question is really the DirRect class.

import pygame
import math
class DirRect(pygame.Rect):
    def direction_to_rect(self, drect):
        ar = math.atan2(self.centery - self.top, self.right - self.centerx) # half of the angle of the right side
        # construct the corner angles into an array to search for index such that the index indicates direction
        # this is normalized into [0, 2π] to make searches easier (no negative numbers and stuff) 
        dirint = [ 2ar, math.pi, math.pi+2ar, 2*math.pi]
        # calculate angle towars the center of the other rectangle, + ar for normalization into
        ad = math.atan2(self.centery - drect.centery, drect.centerx - self.centerx) + ar
        # again normalization, sincen atan2 ouputs values in the range of [-π,π]
        if ad < 0:
            ad = 2*math.pi + ad
        # search for the quadrant we are in and return it
        for i in xrange(len(dirint)):
            if ad < dirint[i]:
                return i
        # just in case -1 as error indicator
        return -1
pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode([400,400])
screen.fill([255,255,255])
This is the paddle
paddle = DirRect( (150,150),(40,20) )
colorize directional information
colors = [ (255,0,0), #right
           (0,255,0), #up
           (0,0,255), #left
           (0,0,0), #down
           (255,255,255) # error = -1
           ]
#show direction for every point
dsurf = pygame.display.get_surface()
for x in xrange(dsurf.get_width()):
    for y in xrange(dsurf.get_height()):
        prect = pygame.Rect((x,y),(0,0))
        dsurf.set_at( (x,y), colors[paddle.direction_to_rect(prect)])
#show paddle
pygame.draw.rect( dsurf, (128,128,128), paddle, 1)
running = True
while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False
        elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN and event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE:
            running = False
    pygame.display.update()
pygame.quit()

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 24 '13 at 01:49

1

def on_collide(paddle, ball):
    # we collided, so which side? Args are the `Rect`s of paddle and ball.
    if paddle.centery < ball.centery:   
        print("paddle bottom")
    elif paddle.centery > ball.centery:
        print("paddle top")

    if paddle.centerx < ball.centerx:
        print("paddle right")
    elif paddle.centerx > ball.centerx:
        print("paddle left")

answered Sep 24 '13 at 01:49

monkey

151
1
7

That looks like a great answer, although I have not had the chance to try it yet. But can pygame do print statements? – Chakotay Oct 30 '13 at 23:11
Yep, you can have a standard console open with pygame. Or you can replace them with your actions there. – monkey Oct 31 '13 at 01:37
this is quiet simple but really what I was looking for – xhallix Jan 02 '15 at 08:43

Pygame - CollideRect - But How Do They Collide?

2 Answers2

Makeup of angles:

Test program

This is the paddle

colorize directional information