A few friends and I have been working on a game together for the last few weeks. Everything was going well at first, but then we ran into a major snag: bullets were colliding with the ground when they clearly shouldn't have been. We are using Flixel and FlxWeapon from the Flixel Power Tools and we would see the issue pop up only on uneven terrain. If we changed our map to a basic, flat piece then everything worked as expected. However, introducing varying height platforms in the map would cause the issue. The image below demonstrates the problem.

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One of the most common tasks in Flash game development is calculating angles. This becomes important in even simple 2D games such as shooters where the player can fire bullets in all directions. If you're anything like me, you're probably not very good with math. I typically will find other ways to get the job done, and indeed I had my own way for figuring bullet paths, but eventually I decided to use real angles and I'm pleased to say it really isn't that bad. (more...)