Weapon Alpha

[Bombshell93]

I advise researching separating axis theorem if you'd like to understand fast and accurate collision detection, along with it, a lot of sites will have information on physics simulation and such to properly control an objects momentum. its also a good idea to learn the uses of the dot product, its the key to silky smooth collision detection, it'll start out a bit mind warpy, but it is very much like riding a bike, once you learn it you could be asked by a stranger on the street to whip up a 2D physics engine and you'll be done before they can say "why is there a computer in the high street!?"
learning this was actually my bridge out of game maker, simply because it drove my curiosity.
and ofc, any troubles feel free to ask, I'll help all I can

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actually you know what? I'll give a go of explaining it,
Seperating Axis Theorem (SAT) is the idea that any convex shape can be checked against any other convex shape for collisions, by getting an axis of each side of each shape and projecting the shapes onto the axis (imagine if this axis was just a straight line and you pushed the shape against the line until it were flat), you can then determine whether the shapes are intersecting based on their positions on that line, if the shapes are not intersecting on 1 or more of the axes (axes being plural axis) then the shapes are not touching.
I believe this page visualizes it best, its demos are interactive,
http://www.metanetsoftware.com/technique/tutorialA.html

the concept is fiendishly simple once you understand the maths.