Gravity Well

During class on Tuesday when we presented the sprint build of the game, it did not get the best reception. The main complaints was that they felt the mechanics of the game were too boring. The past two days, we thought about ways of either saving the mechanics we have now or creating a new mechanic that could be completed before two weeks when we have to present at EAE open house. There were two mechanics that we were split on at the meeting: using a gravity well and splitting the swarm between the two joysticks. The split between two joysticks is using the same mechanics as before, except you get rid of the central character and manipulate the swarm the same way. At its current iteration, each minion of the swarm would go towards the joystick point that they were closest to and use boid rules to swarm around that central point. The player could then use the two points to direct the swarm by attacking the enemy at two points and slamming each one into the enemy at its weak point. My idea was to use a gravity well that the swarm would be attracted to. The player could then use the right joystick to add direction onto the swarm to create a directional attack. If the swarm go too wild, then the player could create a dampening field that would increase its gravitational pull and slow the swarm caught in it to an insignificant speed. I was tasked to prototype this so that the team could play with both and get a better idea which mechanic would be more fun.

The above video shows that implementation (though it still needs work with fine-tuning). When it starts, it just shows the swarm orbiting around the orb. At about 15 seconds in, I move the right joystick to add the offset on the swarm and give them direction. At about 36 seconds, I use the dampening field and show its effects.

In video games, there are two main ways to tackle a physics problem. The first way is to fake the physics and use animations and scripted events to imitate a physics problem. This gives the programmer and player more control over the object; however, the downfall is that its too jilted and stiff and  doesn't look right. The second way is to use a more dynamic approach by essentially creating a simulator that calculates the next points using known physics equations. This create a more natural feeling to the movement of the object, but it takes control out of the hand of the player and is damn difficult to get right. The difficult part is all the constants and variables. It would be a miracle if I could use the gravitational constant of the universe for finding the force of gravity, But it such a low number that its decimal is on the order of magnitude of 6. This would make objects too slow. Use a number too large and the objects move too fast and too out of control. There are many things that can go wrong when using the dynamic approach, but if fine-tuned correctly can create such beautiful motion and animation with an amazing feeling. That's why I like using the dynamic approach over the static, scripted approach that many of my friends have tried getting me to use. I too must accept facts that if we can't get the feeling we want, we don't have the time to play with it and get the right feeling in under three weeks. We may have to use the scripted approach or go with another mechanic.