I have been looking into quadtrees since it is a way to detect collisions. Is there another better way to do this? My game also has a system of sorting sprites in an array based on there relative locations on the map. ie: my character can appear in front of a tree or behind it. I have a complex system to do this which tests polygons however I was wondering if there is an expert way to do this.
well my tank game has two levels of collision detection. Well, I guess in a way it handles all the items in 3 levels.
First level, I have a Vector storing the items on the screen. They're only evaluated in any way if they're in the Vector. I refresh that vector every 10 frames by testing all the objects in the game to see if they're in a rectangle that surrounds the screen.
After that, to check collisions I have a simple distance formula check that finds the distance between the centers of two objects (ie. bullet and tank) and compares them to the sum of the largest dimensions (width for both) to see if they're close enough to collide.
If that check returns true, it calls a third level of collision checking. This check intersects the areas I've created from polygons that outline my objects. This way even if they're rotated in any way, the check only returns true if there's an honest to goodness real accurate collision. This check takes much longer than the previous one, but since it has the first check behind it, this check isn't called very often.
