Plan for Jeremy Alessi
by Jeremy Alessi · 04/27/2005 (9:08 am) · 8 comments
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!
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!
About the author
#2
04/27/2005 (3:25 pm)
Or scale up the player's velocity during the impact calculations to put them on par with projectiles
#3
04/27/2005 (3:47 pm)
You could do that, but changing the mass of the projectile is easier to do.
#4
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.
04/27/2005 (4:41 pm)
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.
#5
04/27/2005 (6:41 pm)
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.
#6
04/27/2005 (7:56 pm)
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.
#7
04/27/2005 (8:14 pm)
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.
#8
04/28/2005 (4:59 pm)
Have you released any videos of KOTM yet? I would love to see some vids of the action.
Torque Owner Chris Labombard