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Plan for Jeremy Alessi

Name:	Jeremy Alessi
Date Posted:	Apr 27, 2005
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Rigid Shapes IN ...

One thing I've seen in KOTM from conception is highly interactive battle arenas. I talked about this a bit before with the super human battle thing ... player bodies destroying the surroundings etc... Tonight I added the rigidShape class to the engine and tweaked a few things to get it to work with KOTM and it's very nice. The only problem is that I have to decide between having player bodies moving the rigid bodies or projectiles.

It's simple physics, velocity is the squared term in kinetic energy. So a fast moving projectile although light will cause a lot more impulse than a heavy yet slow moving player body. If I make some really light rigid bodies to allow the player bodies to move them upon impact then projectiles will knock them completely off the map. If I make the rigid bodies massive then the projectiles move them decently but not completely off the map but then player bodies don't do much if anything. It's a bit of a catch 22 ... I'd like player bodies to move them for that cool effect of a body flying and knocking down the environment (think Terminator or Dragon Ball Z) but then it's also fun to knock stuff around using weapons ... ugh ... decisions ... decisions!

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Chris Labombard (Apr 27, 2005 at 10:35 GMT)

Jeremy, why don't you just decrease the mass of your projectiles? That way you could get both effects you want.
Edited on Apr 27, 2005 15:13 GMT

Daniel Allessi (Apr 27, 2005 at 15:25 GMT)

Or scale up the player's velocity during the impact calculations to put them on par with projectiles

Chris Labombard (Apr 27, 2005 at 15:47 GMT)

You could do that, but changing the mass of the projectile is easier to do.
Edited on Apr 27, 2005 15:48 GMT

Jeremy Alessi (Apr 27, 2005 at 16:41 GMT)

You have to remember that messing with the mass of the projectiles or the velocity of the players when they get hit screws with KOTM's gameplay.

Actually, I was thinking of just de-scaling the impulse vector altogether in a my radiusDamageRigid() function. This way the projectiles will have the same effect on players and a different effect if they hit a rigid shape.

Chris Labombard (Apr 27, 2005 at 18:41 GMT)

What about changing your rigid calculations to use a standardized mass? But I guess you want hte rigidshape to move further from a rocketblast then from a bullet.

Jeremy Alessi (Apr 27, 2005 at 19:56 GMT)

I got it just by scaling down the impulse vector. So I calculate it as normal and then make it 20% of what it's supposed to be for projectile -> rigid body collisions. Seems to work the charm. This will still allow for a large blast to be more pronounced than a small one as you mentioned above.

Tim Hutcheson (Apr 27, 2005 at 20:14 GMT)

Scaling the impulse vector is pretty reasonable because that's about what soft flesh does when hit by a projectile, as opposed to the way a solid (rigid) body behaves. Pretty cool stuff, Jeremy.

Chris Labombard (Apr 28, 2005 at 16:59 GMT)

Have you released any videos of KOTM yet? I would love to see some vids of the action.

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