Flappy Bird's collision detection problem and how to master it

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Kris Carlon
  • Forum posts: 1,110

Feb 6, 2014, 10:10:36 AM via Website

Some of you Flappy Bird fans out there will have noticed by now that the collision detection (when the game says you've hit a pipe) is actually waaay off. This is because the collision detection ''area'' around the sprite (the bird) is a square and it projects out in front of the bird - it's those big lips of his!

Because the collision detection area extends out in front of the bird, when you are doing the nose dive after a high flap, you will quite often ''hit'' a pipe on the way down even when you're nowhere near it - this is the too-large collision detection area in action. Once you know this problem you can account for it. All you need to do is aim to descend earlier than you were before, when you kept having imaginary collisions, to avoid the extended collision area - not the bird itself - from hitting the pipe.

Here's a picture to explain what I mean:

Flappy Bird collision detection

— modified on Feb 6, 2014, 3:47:52 PM

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