Tomorrow Corporation : Retro Game Internals: Contra Collision Detection

There are two kinds of collisions that can happen in a game of Contra: object vs. object collisions, and object vs. level collisions. Each is handled by completely different code and detected using completely different data, so they are basically two separate systems.

In the first post of this series, I mentioned that the game keeps track of three different kinds of objects: players, bullets from players, and enemies. Collision detection is one of the areas where this separation comes into play. Instead of checking for collisions between any and all of these objects, the game only checks collisions between the groups that will react to each other. Players never interact with other players or their bullets, and enemies never interact with other enemies, so the only collisions that matter are those between players and enemies, and those between player bullets and enemies.

Given that enemies are always involved in the object/object collisions that matter, collision detection between objects is done as part of updating all of the enemies. Each frame, the game loops over each active enemy and runs its particular update logic. After an enemy updates, the collision system kicks in and checks that enemy for collisions with players, and then collisions with player bullets. Each enemy has a pair of flags that can be used to indicate to the collision system whether either or both of these kinds of collisions are enabled for that enemy. This is how some enemies, like the bodies of turrets, are able to be shot by the player (by allowing collisions with player bullets) but not able kill you if you walk into them (by not allowing collisions with players.) Beyond these flags, no special logic is used to narrow down the list of potential collisions for an enemy. Every enemy is simply checked against every player and every bullet.

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