Creating custom attack system with "spinner"

[breakman]

Hi,


I'm learning javascript to create a custom attack system for my game (I have experience with Python and some with Ruby, but none with JS, and I also don't have much experience with graphics-based programming) and I'm wondering about the best way to implement the system I have in mind.


The concept I have is that, when a player chooses to attack an enemy, a circle comes up in the middle of the screen, divided into several different colored zones signifying attack strength. An arrow, pointing upwards, is fixed in the middle of the circle. The circle spins (at varying speeds depending on the type of attack) and stops when the player presses the action button. The strength of the player's attack corresponds to whatever zone it lands in. (There's a lot of aspects of this system that can be varied, such as speed of the circle, size of the zones, etc., or different mechanics, such as needing to hit several spots on the circle to perform an attack correctly)


I have two questions:


1) Is there a way I can rotate the circle using javascript or will I somehow need to display a looping animation of the circle spinning?


2) How will I get my program to recognize what point the arrow landed on?


Thanks! 


EDIT: Figured out rotation problem lol, now all I need is an answer to my 2nd question  

 

[sagebrushfire]

It depends on how you're rotating the spinner. If the spinner is an image being animated then it has frames. You need to keep track of what frame it's on and assign attack values to each range of frames that would be activated when one of them is lined up with the pointer. 


If you're rotating the image using degrees,  you need to keep track of the degree of rotation (0-360) and assign ranges of degrees to attack values in the same way. 


This isn't a monumental task if you have one static spinner that doesn't change much. If you want to make this a dynamic spinner where the slices can vary in size dynamically then it becomes much more complex. I would shoot for something in the middle and have 10-12 different types of spinners to choose from so you're only doing programming for a fixed number of spinner layouts but it's more interesting than just having one.