programing the Pythagorean theorem on the 2600

[+grafixbmp]

I would like some help with this classic equasion for use on the 2600. There is a project I have been working on for a bit and still have not rigged a good way to accomplish this in a timely maner. The idea is that if I have a given distance from one point and another distance from the other end of the distance with intercection of both lines ALWAYS being 90 degrees, I want to calculate the hypotenuse and the angle at the starting point. I am thinking I may need to use 2 bytes to get the level of high numerical values I need for greater distances but I can also just use single bytes for shorter distances which will allow less clock cycles to be used. But when it comes to the bigger numbers, I would like to speed things up any way I can. I think that some well designed look up tables would help thigs alot too. Any thoughts on calculating right angle triangles?

[+SpiceWare]

I calculated the hypotenuse in MM, all the versions of the source are available in my blog.

 

My original routine used 16 bit math to do it. Basically I had a table of ^2 values. ie: 0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, ... I didn't take the square root of the results as I didn't need to know that - just needed to know which of the fireballs was closest.

 

In the blog entry for September 2nd, 2006 I revised the routines to use 8 bit math due to lack of CPU time. Basically I used a^2/100 + b^2/100 = x^2/100 so the ^2 table became ^2/100.

Edited May 10, 2008 by SpiceWare

[+grafixbmp]

Something else that might help or substitute some of this is calculating slope of a line on a grid if this can be faster than the angles of a triangle but I still will need the distance or length of the hypotenuse. man it has been a long time since geometry class.