Collision with player following mouse

Question

I'm making a RPG with libGDX. I've loaded a TiledMap and now I'm implementing the player movement. The view is top-down.

In my game I want two ways of input: one is using the ARROW keys to move the player. This implementation works pretty well, including collisions. The second one is a movement based in the mouse. When I click, then the player starts to follow the mouse pointer

 private void autoMove(float speed)
{
    //Start or stop moving
    if (Gdx.input.justTouched()) 
    {
        autoMoving = !autoMoving; 
    }

    //Start follow the mouse
    if (autoMoving)
    {
        //Get direction
        Vector3 point = this.getStage().getViewport().getCamera().unproject(new Vector3(Gdx.input.getX(),Gdx.input.getY(),0));
        dir = new Vector2(point.x - pos.x, point.y- pos.y);

        //Normalize
        dir.nor();

        //Set correct animation
        if (Math.abs(dir.x) <= 0.5)
        {
            if (dir.y >= 0)
            {
                lookingDirection = UP;
            }
            else
            {
                lookingDirection = DOWN;
            }

        }
        else
        {
            if (dir.x >= 0)
            {
                lookingDirection = RIGHT;
            }
            else
            {
                lookingDirection = LEFT;
            }
        }

        //Scale to speed and move
        dir.scl(speed);
        pos.add(dir);
    }

As you can see, I use global variable dirto store the direction of the player. Now I want to handle the collisions with this input. However, I'm not able to do this. I've tried, for example, using pos.add(dir.scl(-1.0f)) but doing this the player gets blocked in every direction. After that, I tried to make the same but blocking only x or y movement based on the lookingDirecion variable. However, player can be looking at right and move a bit upwards, to it's possible to "hack" the system and introduce the player inside the block. I tried with more complex if structures but they didn't worked at all.

The collision code looks like this, if it's useful.

public void checkBounds(float speed)
{
    for (int i=0; i < map.getWidthInTiles(); i++)
    {
        for (int j=0; j < map.getHeightInTiles(); j++)
        {
            //bound is player's rectangle. colBounds are map's impenetrable objects.
            if (bound.overlaps(map.colBounds[i][j]))
            {
                if (!autoMoving) //Control with ARROW keys
                {
                    if (lookingDirection == UP)
                    {
                        pos.y -= speed;
                    }
                    else if (lookingDirection == DOWN)
                    {
                        pos.y += speed;
                    }
                    else if (lookingDirection == RIGHT)
                    {
                        pos.x -= speed;
                    }
                    else if (lookingDirection == LEFT)
                    {
                        pos.x += speed;
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    //MOUSE COLLISION DETECTION
                }
            }
        }
    }

The question is: how can I implement the collision detection for this kind of movement?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Collision detection shouldn't depend on input. You should aim to make your movement and collision systems as generic as possible.

Not only that but I'm seeing an issue with the logic that happens during your frame. You seem to be doing something along the lines of:

//Detect input

//Detect collision

//Move according to facing direction 

//Draw 

Correct me if I've made a mistake with that.

Usually the order of operations for a frame involving collision detection is:

//Detect input

//Move player (usually adding velocity to position)

//Detect collisions and return overlap between player and wall

//Move player back so it's no longer colliding

//Draw

Of course this isn't even as generic as it can get but it's relative to your problem.

During the DetectInput stage you should determine your velocity. If the player has clicked why not set a velocity that doesn't change unless the player clicks again or right clicks to stop. Otherwise just move the player if a key or keys are down in a certain direction. Then you can apply that velocity to position, detect collision and react.

If this is more involved than you want it to be I'd suggest using something like Box2D to handle the collision logic for you so you can just worry about getting your player walking around the way you want.