Creating vector points which are a certain distance away from each other

Questions & Answers
1

Hi guys!

I want to create 4 vector points which are a certain distance away from each other e.g magnitude of 2f.
I know the forLoop part to create the 1st point, but checking the distance from all the other points and creating other points is the tough part…

void getPoints(){

for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ){
point = new Vector3(Random.Range(minX,maxX), Random.Range(minY, maxY),0f);
if(i=0){
pointsVector.add(point);
}
}
}
2

Greetings, @wacasce

Just to be clear, you are talking about a 2D space. There is no way in 2D that four points can all be equidistant. You need a regular tetrahedron to have four points all equidistant and that’s 3D by definition. If you mean that you generate four with each successive one being a fixed distance away from its previous one (even though it may be close to one previously created) then, yes you can do it. Here’s the code.

using UnityEngine;

public class Temp : MonoBehaviour
{
    float distance = 2;
    Vector2[] points = new Vector2[4];

    private void Start()
    {
        points[0] = Vector2.zero;

        for (int i = 1; i < 4; i++)
        {
            Vector2 newPos = Random.insideUnitCircle.normalized;
            points _= newPos * distance + points[i - 1];_

}
}
}

The problem is that you could get bunched points so they won’t feel as if they are a fixed distance apart.

3

@SurreyMuso is correct here, in 2D space you can only have 3 points, where each of them has the exact same distance to the other 2 points. A fourth point would need 3D space.

If we assume that you only want to space them out evenly then you should either have a grid (same distance to all neighbouring points) or all points on a circle (same distance to the next 2 neighbouring points)

so grid:

int gridsize = 10;
int distance = 2;
for(int i = 0; i < gridsize; i++ ){
	for(int j = 0; j < gridsize; j++ ){
		pointsVector.add(new Vector3(i, j, 0f)*distance);
	}
}

circle:

int points = 4;
float circleSize = 2f;
for(int i = 0; i < points; i++ ){
	float angle = i*2*Mathf.PI/points;
	pointsVector.add(new Vector3(Mathf.Sin(angle), Mathf.Cos(angle), 0f)*circleSize);
}

dunno if that helps, let us know if this is what you were searching for.

4

OK. Let’s try this. imagine a game of Noughts and Crosses (tic-tac-toe). The four corner squares are all separated by the inner squares. Let’s get the coordinates of the corner squares and then find random points within a circle around those coordinates. That’s the basis of my code.

using UnityEngine;

public class CreatePoints : MonoBehaviour
{
    void Start()
    {
        float starter = 4;   // Use this as the basis for the outer coordinates
        float radius = 2;    // Use this as the radius for the random circle

        Vector2[] origins = new Vector2[4]
        {
            new(-starter,  starter),
            new( starter,  starter),
            new(-starter, -starter),
            new( starter, -starter)
        };

        Vector2[] points = new Vector2[4];
        for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++)
        {
            points _= Random.insideUnitCircle * radius + origins*;*_

}
}
}
So now you have the array called points[] with the random points that you were after. I’m assuming 2D but this could be adapted to 3D, quite easily…