Efficient maths algorithm to calculate intersections

Question

For a game I am developing I need an algorithm that can calculate intersections. I have solved the problem, but the way I have done it is really nasty and I am hoping someon

Answer 1

If you get the chance you should really check out the Collision Detection bible, "Real Time Collision Detection" if you plan on doing anything non-trivial. I'm not a professional game programmer and I understood and could apply the concepts in it with little trouble.

Amazon - Real Time Collision Detection

Basically, doing a set of line intersection tests is expensive no matter what. What you do is use things like Bounding Boxes (axis aligned or oriented) over your complex polygons. This will allow you to quickly do a worst case O(N^2) check of collision between each "object". You can then speed things up even further by using spatial trees (Binary Partitioning or QuadTrees) by only checking intersections of objects close to eachother.

This allows you to prune many, many collision tests. The best optimization is not doing something at all. Only once you have a collision between bounding boxes do you do your expensive line intersections to determine if the objects truly do intersect or not. This allows you to scale the number of objects up while still keeping the speed reasonable.