Processing collisions between digitally represented mobile objects and free form dynamically created electronic ink

#The invention relates to allowing a computer user to use free form dynamically created electronic ink to interact with digitally represented mobile objects and relates to various techniques for processing collisions between the mobile objects and the ink.

#Computer application programs, such as computer games, screen savers, and the like, may have objects that move around the display screen and interact with other objects within the application program. Computer games in which a ball or other similar moving object moves around and bounces off of walls, paddles, and the like are well known in the art. JezzBall is an example of such a game. FIGS. 1-4 are Jezzball screen shots. JezzBall begins by displaying a game board 100 of tiles 102. The game board initially represents a large area in which balls 104-1 and 104-2 bounce around off of each other and off of the walls 106-1 through 106-4. The two balls 104 move around the screen bouncing off each other and off of the walls 106 according to expected physics principles, such as that the angle of incidence of a collision between a ball and a wall will equal the angle of reflection of the ball as it leaves the wall after the collision. The object of the game is to trap the balls into progressively smaller areas by building horizontal and vertical walls. A person playing JezzBall builds a wall by positioning the cursor and clicking a mouse button. JezzBall builds walls from a central point in opposite vertical or horizontal directions. FIG. 2 shows a vertical wall being built in two wall sections 200-1 and 200-2. FIG. 3 shows a completed version of the wall 300, which was shown being built in FIG. 2.

#FIG. 4 shows the balls 104 confined to small areas 400-1 and 400-2. A user interface element 402 indicates the percentage of the game board 100 that has been cleared. Once 75 percent of the game board has been cleared, the player advances to the next game board, which will have more balls than the previous game board.

#FIGS. 1-4 show a prior art computer game in which balls bounce off each other and off of flat horizontal and vertical walls.

#FIG. 5 shows velocity vectors for a mobile object before and after the mobile object has a conventionally processed collision with a horizontal surface.

#FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram of an exemplary operating environment, in the form of a general purpose computer, in which various aspects of the invention can be implemented.

#General Purpose Computing Environments

#Although not required, the invention will be described in the general context of computer-executable instructions, such as program modules. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, scripts, components, data structures, and the like that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. The invention provides for a software system that may be implemented on any network infrastructure such that networked devices may be remotely controlled by, for example, a general-purpose computer, or a system whereby the networked devices may share information with and about each other. The invention provides and accepts common command, control, and communication through the network while retaining the ability of each device to operate autonomously. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices

#FIG. 6 illustrates a schematic diagram of an exemplary conventional general-purpose digital computing environment that can be used to implement various aspects of the invention. In FIG. 6, a computer 600 includes a processing unit 610, a system memory 620, and a system bus 630 that couples various system components including the system memory to the processing unit 610. The system bus 630 may be any of several types of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. The system memory 620 includes read only memory (ROM) 640 and random access memory (RAM) 650.