Hey all,

I'm just starting off with game physics and at the moment I'm trying to apply a force to a rigid body, for example a rectangle or a circle, and calculate the inertia based on where the force hits it.

Like in a game of pool when you hit a ball in the centre it will go in a straight line. But hit it off the centre and it will travel differently.

Or if I have a seesaw and apply force on one end the other end will go up. It also takes more or less force depending on where the centre of mass is.

I'm just looking for some tips, what are the steps involved and are there any relevant examples people know which could help me.

I'm looking to actually implement this myself, not use already created physics libraries.

Thank you very much.

I found wikipedias articles on the topic very helpful when trying to understand and implement rigid body rotational movement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_momentum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_acceleration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_velocity

The underlying mechanism is very similar to Newton's laws of linear motion.

Cheers,
Mike