are multiple gravity spots possible?

by butonic on 05/25/2004 12:56, 7 messages, last message: 05/25/2004 19:16, 1615 views, last view: 04/26/2024 17:22

I just had a look at the sauerbraten page, and found the map with scatterd cubes very interesting. Imagine every cube had its own gravity: you could jump from one cube to the next. giving you a completely new view of the map!

Sounds too crazy?

just an idea ;)

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#1: ..

by Thalion on 05/25/2004 14:32

Yea, well, imagine also that direction of gravity may change as well. That is if the original idea is not crazy enough for you =)

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#2: "space cubes" ;)

by D.plomat on 05/25/2004 14:52

From the coder point of view:
That isn't probably too hard to do, as long as you use the same gravity amount for each solid cube(or eventually depending on the size) and restrict the attraction distance to a certain range to avoid using too much CPU to compute an acceleration vector for each and every cube's attraction. If you know some coding you can try. Would be a bit more difficult if you want the player to be able to "rotate" on all the axis, probably the collision detection will be harder to have player walking *exactly* on a deformed cube surface, and decide on what "corner angle" it decides the player doesn't stick anymore to the surface, but "jumps" out of it.
And would be *very* harder if you want non full-solid cubes to have attraction depending on their "mass", you'll have to do some volumetric integrale(sorry i don't know the english word) and that is really though(and probably too much CPU consuming too). Another option would be to have the mapper put gravity entities, but that would
a) be somewhat empiric to code
b) be more complex and many tuning required for the mapper
c) make use of an incompatible map format
In fact the kind of movement you want is a bit like swimming in Quake 1, except that there's no water friction, right?

From the mapper point of view: i think this would require much more testing

From the player point of view: that could be fun. IMO i wouldn't like to be forced always playing in that configuration, but a special mode would be fun, i think that hasn't been done before. Still i try to imagine what would be a battle with such physics and the impact on gameplay, and what kind of controls should be used to be intuitive... maybe it would be slower gameplay than Cube and a bit more "random", as with a 1 axis rotation you only have to make some turns to "monitor" what's happening around, as with this mode you'll most likely get killed from top or bottom... in fact the only games that provides movement with 3-axis free rotation are things like descent, old terminal-velocity, planes etc, but they somewhat restrict the way you move to adapt to the feeling of piloting something(ie your controls doesn't affect position but speed/acceleration) and that eventually has an important impact on gameplay... i wonder how would be totally free movement...

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#3: My approach...

by Pxtl on 05/25/2004 15:55

I'd have it like this: First, have each air (non-solid) cube simply have two attributes: gravitational force vector, and perspective-up unit vector. Perspective-up would be for the user's vision "this side up" while the force vector is for pushing the player around. In this way you could build Escher's Relativity style rooms.

Second would be a whole other form of object that would be a "gravity point" for Newtonian centric gravity. That would be used if you wanted to actually have points to which a player is sucked. The first would be far more useful for complex mapping, and the second would be good for specific oddball uses.

This sort of design would support both old-fashioned Cube play as well as newer theoretical player classes that handle more like Descent and suchlike. I've been going over stuff like this back and forth, and have some odd ideas for Sauers geometry system. The fact that volumes are so pleasantly atomic in Sauer has good possibilities for giving them interesting attributes.

Apparently the Serious engine has support for similar play that is very fun.

Still, I'm sure that, as always, mappers would stick to conventional geometry. As I learned from UT, many players tend to be annoyed and bored by "theme" maps.

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#4: Re: My approach...

by Thalion on 05/25/2004 16:04, refers to #3

Yes, but it would open quite a lot of possibilities for single-player mods...

Also, have you seen the last map in Unreal 2? I've found their gravity tricks there quite interesting.

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#5: Re: My approach...

by Thalion on 05/25/2004 16:05, refers to #3

BTW after reading your post I just realised that Sauer would probably be the ideal engine for a Descent clone =)

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#6: Re: My approach...

by Pxtl on 05/25/2004 16:14, refers to #5

Absolutely. IMHO, Descent's greatest weakness has always been that the mapping focussed on walls, where the gameplay took place in volumes themselves. Just as conventional FPS games had conveyor belts, slippery terrain swimming, low-grav zones, jump platforms, elevators, etc. - where are the vacuum, fluid, pusher, and catapult zones of Descent? IIRC, the only interesting zones in Descent is Lava (a wall, not really a zone) and energy-zones. Sauer makes volumes easy. With some support for alpha walls, environmental fog, and particle systems, really interesting zones could be added.

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#7: local gravity

by Aardappel on 05/25/2004 19:16

is very easy to do. I just don't see it as an interesting feature.

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