It's fairly straightforward to do this for regular polygon.
The area of an n-sided regular polygon, with a circumscribed circle of radius R is
A = 1/2 nR^2 * sin((2pi)/n)
Therefore, knowing n and A you can easily find R
R = sqrt((2*A)/(n*sin((2pi)/n))
So, you can pick the center, go at distance R and generate n points at 2pi/n
angle increments.
In R:
regular.poly <- function(nSides, area)
{
# Find the radius of the circumscribed circle
radius <- sqrt((2*area)/(nSides*sin((2*pi)/nSides)))
# I assume the center is at (0;0) and the first point lies at (0; radius)
points <- list(x=NULL, y=NULL)
angles <- (2*pi)/nSides * 1:nSides
points$x <- cos(angles) * radius
points$y <- sin(angles) * radius
return (points);
}
# Some examples
par(mfrow=c(3,3))
for (i in 3:11)
{
p <- regular.poly(i, 100)
plot(0, 0, "n", xlim=c(-10, 10), ylim=c(-10, 10), xlab="", ylab="", main=paste("n=", i))
polygon(p)
}
We can extrapolate to a generic convex polygon.
The area of a convex polygon can be found as:
A = 1/2 * [(x1*y2 + x2*y3 + ... + xn*y1) - (y1*x2 + y2*x3 + ... + yn*x1)]
We generate the polygon as above, but deviate angles and radii from those of the regular polygon.
We then scale the points to get the desired area.
convex.poly <- function(nSides, area)
{
# Find the radius of the circumscribed circle, and the angle of each point if this was a regular polygon
radius <- sqrt((2*area)/(nSides*sin((2*pi)/nSides)))
angle <- (2*pi)/nSides
# Randomize the radii/angles
radii <- rnorm(nSides, radius, radius/10)
angles <- rnorm(nSides, angle, angle/10) * 1:nSides
angles <- sort(angles)
points <- list(x=NULL, y=NULL)
points$x <- cos(angles) * radii
points$y <- sin(angles) * radii
# Find the area of the polygon
m <- matrix(unlist(points), ncol=2)
m <- rbind(m, m[1,])
current.area <- 0.5 * (sum(m[1:nSides,1]*m[2:(nSides+1),2]) - sum(m[1:nSides,2]*m[2:(nSides+1),1]))
points$x <- points$x * sqrt(area/current.area)
points$y <- points$y * sqrt(area/current.area)
return (points)
}