How do I make a curved surface out of rectangular blocks?

Question

For a Peggle-like game, I want to make blocks that follow a curve, like this:

The blocks would then disappear as the ball hits them.

I managed to draw some horizontally, but I'm having trouble making them follow a path:

How do I do this? Do I need to create Box2D objects with custom vertices?

Answer 1

Given a "root" curve, here's how you might generate block vertices.

The root curve is in the middle, in black. Its control points are shown with red Xs.

In short: I made a Bézier and sampled it (at a configurable rate). I then found the perpendicular vector of the vector from each sample to the next, normalised it, and scaled it to to a (configurable) half-width, first to the left, then inversely to the right. Then drew it.

Stuff you could add to this:

• Change parameters, for wider or thicker blocks.
• Generate triangles (as egarcia mentions) and texture them. It would look much like that first picture!
• Sample the curve at equal arc lengths (here too), to size blocks' widths consistently. (In this implementation, the central control point's position affects blocks' relative sizes.)

---

Here's my code. It's written in Lua (for the LÖVE game framework), but I think it's readable for anyone.

local v = require "vector"

-- A function that makes bezier functions
-- Beziers have start point     p0
--              control point   p1
--              end point       p2
local function makeBezierFunction(p0,p1,p2)
    return function (t)
        local pow = math.pow
        return pow( (1-t),2 ) * p0
               + 2 * (1-t) * t * p1
               + pow(t,2) * p2
    end
end

love.graphics.setBackgroundColor(255, 255, 255)
function love.draw()
    local line = love.graphics.line
    local colour = love.graphics.setColor

    -- Bezier sampling parameters
    local nSegments = 10
    local segIncr = 1/nSegments

    -- Bezier definition: Start (`p0`), control (`p1`) and end `p2`) point
    local p0 = v(100,100)
    local p1 = v( love.mouse.getX(), love.mouse.getY() )
    local p2 = v(500,100)
    local controlPoints = {p0,p1,p2}
    local bez = makeBezierFunction(p0,p1,p2)

    -- Sample the bezier
    for i=0,1-segIncr,segIncr do
        colour(0, 0, 0)
        local x1,y1 = bez(i        ):unpack()
        local x2,y2 = bez(i+segIncr):unpack()
        line(x1,y1,x2,y2)

        -- Find left and right points.
        local center = v(x1, y1)
        local forward = v(x2, y2) - center
        local left = center + forward:perpendicular():normalize_inplace() * 10
        local right = center - forward:perpendicular():normalize_inplace() * 10

        -- Draw a line between them.
        line(left.x, left.y, right.x, right.y)

        -- Find *next* left and right points, if we're not beyond the end of
        -- the curve.
        if i + segIncr <= 1 then
            local x3, y3 = bez(i+segIncr*2):unpack()
            local center2 = v(x2, y2)
            local forward2 = v(x3, y3) - center2
            local left2 = center2 + forward2:perpendicular():normalize_inplace() * 10
            local right2 = center2 - forward2:perpendicular():normalize_inplace() * 10

            -- Connect the left and right of the current to the next point,
            -- forming the top and bottom surface of the blocks.
            colour(0, 0xff, 0)
            line(left.x, left.y, left2.x, left2.y)
            colour(0, 0, 0xff)
            line(right.x, right.y, right2.x, right2.y)
        end
    end

    -- Draw an X at the control points
    for _,p in ipairs(controlPoints) do
        local x,y = p:unpack()
        colour(0xff,0x00,0x00)
        line(x-5,y-5, x+5,y+5)
        line(x-5,y+5, x+5,y-5)
    end
    -- Draw lines between control points
    for i=1,#controlPoints do
        colour(0xff,0x00,0x00, 100)
        local cp1 = controlPoints[i]
        local cp2 = controlPoints[i+1]
        if cp1 and cp2 then
            line(cp1.x, cp1.y
                ,cp2.x, cp2.y)
        end
    end
end

If you'd like to play with it: Get LÖVE and put the above code into main.lua in its own directory. Put vector.lua from the HUMP library in the same directory. Run it as love <that-directory> from a command line.

Move the mouse around! The middle control point is set to the mouse location: