Mulitplexity: Building Brick Artillery

[WILL]

Well what if you gain AP or 'artillery points' for the bigger more elaborate structures they build? That would add some balance as the bigger you make your tower, the harder it can/will fall. Plus you'll have less room to maneuver in as well.

And if you go in rounds, you can buy new pieces from which to build with... considering you gain any hits on other towers...

[Huehnerschaender]

There is not much progress since some days due to several reasons:

- I quit smoking which dropped me down in a little "motivation hole". But this seems to be over now... it's getting better now from day to day. One week without a single cigarette now
- Job had some deadlines, too... the last one is tomorrow.

But I think I am far enough with my entry to upload it as it is. So I just uploaded my basic game engine with the readme.

And if someone of you would like to take a look at my game so far, then don't hesitate to click on the following link, read the readme and start it

Oh, and if you do so, please tell me if and how it works for you...

http://www.dino-it.de/Stage2_upload.rar

Greetings,
Dirk

[Sascha Willems]

I gave it a try and performance is good on my system, around 200 fps with activated AA and 16xAF.

But I noticed some oddities in physics after playing around for some minutes.

First, the simulation is too fast. Maybe it's because of your timing for physics which runs too fast on my machine or maybe it's a general problem which you then can easily tweak. But the bricks fall down very fast over here.

Second, the bricks are too "hard" (or at leas their material), cause they should at least bounce a bit when falling down, especially since the game is played on a carpet.

Third, I think your bricks have the wrong inertia. Are you using Newton's built-in function for calculating inertia? I made several different towers and noticed that the bricks don't react like I expected them most of the time, and I was even able to create something like that, which actually shouldn't be possible :





P.S. : As mentioned in another thread I'm NOT commenting on the actual gameplay itself due to fairness reasons

[Huehnerschaender]

Hi Sascha,

thanks for the comments.
I know about the most things with the physics. I was playing around with many different values which all have some "oddities" when it comes to buidling towers with the bricks. My biggest problem was, that Newton caused the bricks to "wobble" on each other after they are placed, so you were not able to build towers higher than lets say 3 or 4 bricks.
I eliminated this "problem" by setting a quite high autofreeze treshold, which also causes those "impossible" situations you have shown. But the bricks are not "wobbling" anymore.

I think I have to make some compromises here between physical simulation and gameplay. Its just the basic engine now, not the final game. And I know that tweeking is necessary, but I have to dig a little deeper into Newton when the rest of the gameplay is working.

I use quite high gravity, which lets the bricks fall quite fast... I will take a look at different speeds (CPUs) later if the behaviour is varying on faster PCs... At the moment I can just tell that its running ok on my machine...

Greetings,
Dirk

Edit: And yes, I calculate inertia with Newtons functions:

	NewtonConvexCollisionCalculateInertialMatrix(Collision, @Inertia.x, @Origin.x);
	Ixx := Mass * Inertia.x;
	Iyy := Mass * Inertia.y;
	Izz := Mass * Inertia.z;
  NewtonBody := NewtonCreateBody(TGameEngine(GameEngine).NewtonWorld, Collision);
	NewtonBodySetCentreOfMass (NewtonBody, @Origin.x);
	NewtonBodySetMassMatrix (NewtonBody, Mass, Ixx, Iyy, Izz);

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Hi Dirk,

Is it supposed to start full screen? The reason I ask... no border... it occupies the top left corner of my screen... camera appears to work, BUT, I don't have full control. By that I mean if the program has focus, the cursor stays in the center of the screen and I can't move it. If it doesn't have focus, the cursor follows the mouse perfectly, but of course nothing works.

[Huehnerschaender]

No fullscreen. It should start with 1024x768 top/left aligned window without border... I guess I should change this, huh?

I wonder why you can't get control on the game.... tried to use Alt+Tab to "activate" the window again and click in the window? Anyhow, I think I'll upload a fullscreen version (which I did not do because this version is directly thrown out of my debugging environment and debugging DirectX applications is much easier in windowed mode ).

[Huehnerschaender]

Here is another exe only... could you please overwrite the old exe with this one and tell me if it works for you Christina?

http://www.dino-it.de/BBA.rar

[AthenaOfDelphi]

I tried all the standard tricks to get control. Clicked out, clicked back. Alt+Tab. As soon as it gets focus, the cursor locks to the center. When its not in focus, and I move the cursor over it, the hand tracks and moves around perfectly.

[Huehnerschaender]

With this fullscreen version too No control?

[AthenaOfDelphi]

I posted as you did I think hon. But I've just tried the full screen version and I'm getting the same thing.