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iOS Solution: Tower Defense Game

Posted by Raymond Carter, Jr.
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Raymond Carter, Jr.
iOS Development Techdegree Student 488 Points

Looking for understanding on this problem

Can somebody go into detail and help me understand how to solve this problem, please!!

Write code to determine how far they are from one another using the Distance Formula. The Distance Formula can be broken down into the following steps

  • Subtract the distance between the X coordinates of the Tower and Enemy and square it
  • Subtract the distance between the Y coordinates of the Tower and Enemy and square it
  • Add the two square values
  • Obtain the square root of the resulting value */

// Enter your code here

I really appreciate the help I'm new to coding

1 Answer

Robert Bird
Robert Bird
26,122 Points
Robert Bird
Robert Bird
26,122 Points

Raymond,

I often wonder why coding exercises mix programming with math, if you don't understand the math, the programming becomes even harder to understand. Understanding this problem is more math than programming. For this problem you need to know the Pythagorean theorem which says that if you have a right triangle, then a^2 + b^2 = c^2 where a is a side of the triangle, b is a side of the triangle and c is the hypotenuse (the diagonal side we are trying to figure out). Suppose that two points are (2,3) and (5,7). then we can subtract the x values 5-2 = 3 which is a side of the triangle, subtract the y values 7-3 = 4 which is the b side of the triangle. that means that c^2 is equal to 3^2 + 4^2 which is equal to 9 + 16 = 25. If 25 is the diagonal squared then in order to get the diagonal we need to take the square root of 25, which is 5. Therefore, given any two coordinates we can figure out the distance. The video kind of assumes you already know this, not sure why they assume this. I hope that helps but it probably wont so here is a video explaining it a lot better than I can.

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/basic-geo/basic-geometry-pythagorean-theorem/pythagorean-theorem-distance/v/distance-formula

Just know that your confusion does not really have anything to do with coding, but rather with math.