Physics...

by Dr_Evil1 on 09/09/2007 14:27, 127 messages, last message: 04/30/2008 03:02, 94130 views, last view: 05/05/2024 21:22

Out of interest, how advanced is the physics in Sauer? The only notable useage I see in-game is the GL rebound of walls, and a slower movement time whilst in water, (both player and grenades).

Increasingly, physics is becoming a parallel with graphics in importance in new gaming titles. Half Life 2 comes instantly to mind.

If the physics are basic, if they were to be improved levels with physobjects could become a reality. New gamemodes, mods and SP missions could become a reality. Graphicly, Sauerbraten is probably the best open source game out there, especialy the water :-).

Personaly as a BIG HL2 and GMOD player, the possible inclusion of a physics engine per-say would increase the quality of gameplay dramaticaly.

Thoughts? -- Dr_evil

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#107: ..

by JadeMatrix on 04/21/2008 14:13

OK, how about forgetting a gravity factor in the cfg, and make a gravity ent?

newent gravity force radius Xdirection Ydirection

or whatever, similar to jumppads, just there's a radius value. Everything within the radius of the ent is affected by that gravity. This has its pros and cons, too: you can have multiple gravity bubbles in a map (each room w/ different gravity, etc.) but you can't script it to change.

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#108: Re: Gravity Ent

by tentus_ on 04/21/2008 15:26, refers to #107

You'ld probably want it to be like this:
gravity radius Xdirection Ydirection Zdirection
This means that a thorough mapper could create walls and ceilings that a player could climb on. It could also be used to make patches of grass slow a player down, or simulate the pull of a drain in water.

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#109: Re: Gravity Ent

by SheeEttin on 04/21/2008 23:22, refers to #108

Or just "gravity force radius", where the player is attracted to the ent... Not sure what specifying directions could do that appropriate placement couldn't.

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#110: Re: Gravity Ent

by tman_elite on 04/21/2008 23:28, refers to #109

That's what I was thinking. And a negative gravity value would push you away instead of pulling you in.

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#111: Re: Gravity Ent

by tentus_ on 04/22/2008 04:19, refers to #109

If you specified directions you could use a single ent to make an entire room low grav or sideways or something. With sucking-in ents, you would have to create many ents to avoid having a water drain effect (where the force always draws you towards the center of the room).

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#112: ..

by IllvilJa on 04/22/2008 11:33

Thought regarding zero gravity or low gravity physics (or actually, normal gravity physics as well)... what about implementing "fly on the wall" physics.

Whenever a player reaches some surface he can hold on to (by some means like magnetic shoes, sticky insect feet, good old magic or why not simply by being able to by the game source code) then his/her points of reference changes so the "up" direction (as far as aiming using the "pitch/yaw" model) coincides with the normal he/she is attached to.

That means, when hitting jump, one simply drifts away (in an arc if in gravity) until a wall is reached, then one stands on the wall as if one were a fly, and the player will percieve the wall as being the floor (moving the mouse up will move the aim away from the wall moving the mouse down moves the aim towards the wall).

One can even imagine players moving along the walls and ceiling, as if they were flies walking on the surfaces.

Of course, to avoid too jerky changes to the "up" point of reference, there must be a more gradual change to the "up" direction as the player approache and traverses edges between surfaces having differently oriented normals.

Could be a pretty cool variant of warfare, fighting it out on "real" space station. ;-).

Harpoons with grappling hooks could turn out to be useful, so one could shoot out a harpoon and attach it to some surface to which one want's to get. Could be DESPERATELY useful if one's own recoil or someones elses rocket/grenade/firepower manages to send oneself tumbling away into the emptiness of space. Yes, I'm envisioning combat on the OUTSIDE of a space station, spaceship or asteroid mining station, combat where combatants might die not only from direct shot injuries (or having their suits atmosphere evacuated completely due to the suit being damaged, causing suffocation in vacuum) but where there is a real danger tumbling away from the combat scene only to die a slow death in the vast emptiness of space as one drifts farther and farther away (ok, from a game perspective, the player simply "dies" and have to respawn when he/she drifts until the edge of the bounding "world" octree cube).

Just a thought.

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#113: Re: Gravity Ent

by JadeMatrix on 04/22/2008 17:09, refers to #108

What would the Z axis be, anyway? It's not needed. Technically, you could think of the radius as the Z, but it's easier to call it radius.

Yes, I agree the drain affect would suck. The only benefit of "black hole" would be ease of use... other than that, you'd need multiples for large rooms (harder on the comp), and even then you'd get the drain effect.

Actually, this might be better as a rectangular volume ent of some sort rather than a spherical.

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#114: Re: Gravity Ent

by tentus_ on 04/22/2008 18:29, refers to #113

Z would affect vertical, so it'd be used to raise/lower gravity. Y would affect North-South gravitation. X would affect East-West gravitation.

An additional benefit of having this ent would be the creation of water currents. Place a sting of ents in a river to create a feeling of flow. This could also be used to create "soft" boundaries for maps that are edged with hills and stuff: a judicious placement of high grav ents could keep the player from scaling inclines that they might otherwise be able to climb.

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#115: Re: Gravity Ent

by tman_elite on 04/22/2008 21:03, refers to #114

I think it would be good to have both the (x,y,z) and the simple (radius, magnitude) versions. The x,y,z idea would be hard to use for something like a "water-drain" or if you want like a spherical map where you can walk all around it (I think Super Mario Galaxy is something like that), which would be really cool.

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#116: ..

by Captain_Ahab on 04/23/2008 04:44

I think it should be an ent, similar in form to the particle entity, but instead of particles, it pushes a dynamic model ( player, monster,crate, etc.) in the specified direction.

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#117: ..

by Quin on 04/23/2008 10:07

Well, this is the question thats been bouncing around in my head ever since I conceived the idea of variable gravity in the engine. In my work with BF I like to toy with gimmick ideas from time to time, and this has been one that has always sat high on my list.

I look around to do it, with ideas on how, but too many variables and too many different but equally valid ways to do it. Create an entity and use spherical gravity? No, that wouldn't do well in flat situations. Use something like materials for physics? Too flat, wouldn't work well on planetoids and spheres. Use both? Alot more work.

I like the possibilities this idea holds, as tentus pointed out with the water currents. Yes, Super Mario Galaxy is a great demonstration too. Quite interested to hear what solutions you guys could provide.

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#118: ..

by IllvilJa on 04/23/2008 12:38

This has the potential of turning the game into a potential spacewar. Especially if players themselves aren't beings but instead spacecrafts.

Zip around, blow up enemy spaceship and help your team spread out your colonies to new planets. Like good old Netrek in a 3D setting.

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#119: ..

by IllvilJa on 04/23/2008 12:40

(the word "potential" twice in a sentence. Now THAT is writing skills! :-/ Sigh. An edit function for the forum would be helpful to preserve our dignity when we submit grammatically challenged posts...)

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#120: ..

by RealNitro on 04/23/2008 13:50

Spherical gravity would enable a Mario Galaxy-like FPS. :) But what happens when a player is inside two gravity-entities?

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#121: Re: ..

by JadeMatrix on 04/23/2008 14:55, refers to #120

They're averaged.

Well, I think a directional gravity ent is more immediately important, as it has more practical applications. A drain ent could come later.

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#122: Someone...

by asdfconorasdfconorjkl on 04/26/2008 15:40

Someone forgot who just pointed out a great idea for a game mode that could make for something really interesting, and a reason for someone to try out sauerbraten.

Have it so you can run at a wall and that will become your 'floor'. There would be people running all around because instead of just finding someone to shoot, you have to look around X 4.

Just an idea.

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#123: ..

by smartalco on 04/27/2008 03:01

only thing, you would have to make it so that when you end up in a gravity field that is pulling you towards the wall, your character model turns sideways (same thing on ceiling, otherwise you have guys running on their heads XD)

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#124: Re: ..

by Quin on 04/27/2008 04:06, refers to #123

Ya think? Might wanna lay off that alco :P

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#125: ..

by Soggy Waffles on 04/27/2008 21:35

If each wall and floor would have their own gravity properties, it would turn to be like the physics integration of portal, that is gravity would be simultaneously shifting in accordance with the players location between different physical entities, so if two walls are each pulling you in two direction, you would be "floating" in between them, practically at leas. You go towards one wall and jump to another with differing gravitational properties, then do it again and again and it would turn into uber intense camera spinning bonanza, and some insane gameplay. Imagine that, if there were portals everywhere that you could go through seamlessly, there would be players shooting outta the walls in every direction.

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#126: ..

by PudMoZ on 04/30/2008 02:40

How about, because this would probably be a lot easier to implement, we just create a new material called "force" which exerts a force with a specified magnitude in a specified direction? Essentially, it would be a field of jumppads that act on you gradually instead of all at once.

Now I'm going to go off with my mad scientist ideas that will probably never be implemented: We create layers of materials so that each material can overlap another material. In the conventional sense of things like water and glass this doesn't make much sense (that sounds weird... oh well :P), but we would be able to overlap a "force" material with a "water" material so that forces could remain consistent throughout different environments.

Even more crazy ideas that are probably going to mangle terms that I don't fully understand: I'm not sure how materials are implemented right now, I'm guessing they're a reduced octree of some sort because you can't make anything but cubes. I'm not sure if the data is reduced for efficiency or size of data but anyway if we had a whole bunch of separate layers of octrees, one for each material, all placed on top of eachother, this could be accomplished...

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