Java2D Shooting in a line tangent to mouse coordinates

Question

I am making a top down shooter in Java and I need to be able to shoot in a line tangent to the mouse coordinates. In other words I need to be able to click my mouse and have a projectile spawn from my player, then move its position in a straight line in the direction of where I clicked. I have tried this already and I have failed miserably, and after looking into it for a while I haven't found a good answer. The code is pasted below, any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

The mouse angle is calculated like this:

mouseAngle = (float) Math.toDegrees((float) Math.atan2(e.getY() - Player.getY(), e.getX() - Player.getX()));

VectorMath class

package vector;

public class VectorMath {

    public VectorMath() {

    }

    public static void copyVector(Vector2f v1, Vector2f v2){
        v1.setX(v2.getX());
        v1.setY(v2.getY());
    }

    public static void printVector(Vector2f v){
        System.out.println("x: " + v.getX() + " y: " + v.getY());
    }

}

Projectile Class

package projectile;

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Graphics2D;

import player.Mouse;
import player.Player;
import vector.Vector2f;
import vector.VectorMath;

public class Bullet {

    private Vector2f pos = new Vector2f(0, 0);
    private float x,y, xVel, yVel, moveSpeed = 0.1f, dX, dY;;
    private float mouseAngle;

    public Bullet(Vector2f pos) {
        VectorMath.copyVector(this.pos, pos);
        VectorMath.printVector(this.pos);
        x = Player.getX();
        y = Player.getY();
        mouseAngle = Mouse.getMouseAngle();
    }

    public void update(){
        xVel = pos.getX() + (((float)Math.cos(mouseAngle)) / moveSpeed);
        yVel = pos.getY() + (((float)Math.sin(mouseAngle)) / moveSpeed);

        dX = x + xVel;
        dY = y + yVel;

        x = dX;
        y = dY;

    }

    public void render(Graphics2D g2){
        g2.setColor(Color.green);
        g2.fillRect((int)x, (int)y, 10, 10);
    }

}

Answer 1

If you don't mind bullets coming from the center of the player, then you should make the mouse location into a vector, subtract the player's location vector, giving you the translation from the player's current position to the mouse cursor. Then, divide that by however many frames as you want it to take to reach the target (or normalize it to a unit vector and multiply by a given speed scalar) and set the result as a velocity vector.

If I understand your naming correctly, the following should replace your constructor and update functions:

public class Bullet {
  private Vector2f pos = new Vector2f(0, 0);
  private float x,y, xVel, yVel;
  private float moveSpeed = 2;
  public Bullet(Vector2f pos) {
    VectorMath.copyVector(this.pos, pos);
    VectorMath.printVector(this.pos);
    x = Player.getX();
    y = Player.getY();
    float tX = x-Mouse.getX();
    float tY = y-Mouse.getY();
    float mag = (float) java.lang.Math.hypot(tX, tY);
    tX/=mag;
    tY/=mag;
    tX*=moveSpeed;
    tY*=moveSpeed;
    xVel = tX;
    yVel = tY;
  }
  public void update(){
    x += xVel;
    y += yVel;
}

... rest of your code as before.