How to calculate distance between two rectangles? (Context: a game in Lua.)

Question

Given two rectangles with x, y, width, height in pixels and a rotation value in degrees -- how do I calculate the closest distance of their outlines toward each other?

Background: In a game written in Lua I'm randomly generating maps, but want to ensure certain rectangles aren't too close to each other -- this is needed because maps become unsolvable if the rectangles get into certain close-distance position, as a ball needs to pass between them. Speed isn't a huge issue as I don't have many rectangles and the map is just generated once per level. Previous links I found on StackOverflow are this and this

Many thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Not in Lua, a Python code based on M Katz's suggestion:

def rect_distance((x1, y1, x1b, y1b), (x2, y2, x2b, y2b)):
    left = x2b < x1
    right = x1b < x2
    bottom = y2b < y1
    top = y1b < y2
    if top and left:
        return dist((x1, y1b), (x2b, y2))
    elif left and bottom:
        return dist((x1, y1), (x2b, y2b))
    elif bottom and right:
        return dist((x1b, y1), (x2, y2b))
    elif right and top:
        return dist((x1b, y1b), (x2, y2))
    elif left:
        return x1 - x2b
    elif right:
        return x2 - x1b
    elif bottom:
        return y1 - y2b
    elif top:
        return y2 - y1b
    else:             # rectangles intersect
        return 0.

where

• dist is the euclidean distance between points
• rect. 1 is formed by points (x1, y1) and (x1b, y1b)
• rect. 2 is formed by points (x2, y2) and (x2b, y2b)