Hello world!
Well, this is my very first post for vectormovement.wordpress.com. This blog will try to deal with everything related to vector movement but first and foremost to my paper and pencil space combat system called Intercept (and yes, of course it uses vector movement). Vector movement in games has been with us a long time and my contact with it dates back to the early 1970s when I was taught car racing on graph paper by a teacher. For those who have not heard about vector movement or doesn’t quite grasp the subject let me explain it a little:
Vector movement is a way to simulate, in games and elsewhere, how objects move when they are subject to Newtonian movement and as long as we stay well below the speed of light that is true of everything, you, me, our planet and all real world space craft. The reason we lack an intuitive grasp of vector movement is because real world objects are subject to air friction, rolling resistance, muscular resistance etc as all these hide the underlying mechanisms of vector movement. Hovercraft and Curling stones have reduced ground friction to a degree where the Newtonian nature of their movement is clearly visible. Spacecraft, moving in the stark vacuum of space are subject to even less drag, so little as in fact that the Voyager probes sent out in 1977 are still travelling at about the same speed except for the speed loss caused by ‘climbing uphill’ in the gravity well of our Sun.
Doing vector movement in a game goes something like this (not all games do it this way, notably the Attack Vector boardgame)
- Measure the speed and direction of you last move
- Apply it again as your future drift position.
- Apply acceleration from the drift position to get your true future position.
- The speed and direction (together we call speed and direction a ‘vector’) is your new move.
Yes, vector movement is this simple and you can do car races or space fights with just pencils and graph paper.
Vector movement 
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