[beta] planetary physics

No, I'm not asking how you do them, but I do have a game prototype that uses them that I'm looking for feedback on :p

I've gotten complaints about the acceleration being hard to control, so the knobs on the front page are there to control that (default settings:1, 4th box)

Like my last game, Valo, the music is procedurally generated based on the player's actions. Although I'm not done working on the sound and such so far.

Up = repel
Down = attractx2
both = glide

get the small yellow planets to "beat" the level.

If you click "credits" you can experiment with an early level editor if you wish, tutorial does nothing

http://ian.janasnyder.com/planets.htm



Keep, in mind, this is nowhere near complete, I'm looking for feedback for a concept, rather than for a game.

Thanks!

hmm, you might want to include some sort of boundry, you dont want to drift too far out
the action is kind of lacking too :(

oh right, as far as ideas go, if you want to keep up with this gravitational theme, i get the strange idea of a pinball like game...some well put curved walls for example would allow you to accelerate real nice by just using the repel key (the curves, of course, guiding your ball)

out of curiosity, what formula are you using for gravity? the "correct" one (which may not be so useful in a game) would be:
(mass1+mass2)/distance^2

eh, im also getting an idea of gravitational blobs, much harder to code (due to their irregular shape, you'll need more calculations), but i imagine will look real neat

Seems to me like the planet ought to attract other planets?

The equation for gravity doesn't include an addition of the masses, but a multiplication.

@Trogdor

Yeah, I'm planning on adding some actual challenge to the game in the future, this is more just a proof of concept right now, to nail down the controls I guess. I like your pinball idea, but I'm not sure it fits the atmosphere...I'll probably end up using some of those elements though

Also, it's basically just newton's equation, hacked a bit by me.


@ Vengeance

You would think that, but if you mean having full blown physics where every planet is orbiting...good luck, I think flash might get a bit of a headache...unless you mean just simple particles orbiting around the white planet.


@ug

yeah...multiply

Hm, I like it.

It needs more depth, more to control somehow.

What if you had to use gravity controls to fly within range and create an orbit that will keep you from colliding and being destroyed. Once there, you fire out a little ship that maneuvers realistically through space (inertially, frictionlessly). The little ship can be used for more "artificial" manipulations of the world while the planet is only for the kind of magical-natural manipulation of gravity. Of course, the planet is less controllable, but more powerful.

I like it alot.
Seems quite original, and it could potentially be a great game.
I’m brain dead after the massive pile of h/work I’ve just made my way through, so the best additions to the game that I can think of at the moment are:
• Control- Imo, the player control is really frustrating. The fact that I can’t control the player with any direction apart from using gravity can be either very intuitive or reduces the fun.
I’m not sure if this game would be better off having a controllable a ship (planet gravity is obviously still present, but you would have the option to use the ships thrusters), or leaving it as is but allowing minor player movement
• Objective- There are so many possibilities at this point, but the few that come to mind are:
-Navigate your craft/character from point A through asteroid fields solar systems etc, to point B without crashing.
-Mission based levels: Land on planets safely, collect orbiting space objects, etc.
• Graphics- Very nice, cant complain here at all. Loved the particle effects, except they were a little pointless (if you collide with a planet, then something more then particle effects should happen)

That’s it from me, hope it all made sense (as I said, I’m a little tired), and best of luck

Viza

I dunno, I didn't really get it. The movement around the planets is nice and fluid, but I just found it too difficult to control and I constantly found myself flying off away from them with no idea where I was and with the controls seeming to do nothing.

Obviously I'm being unfair, since hopefully the tutorial would sort out a lot of my problems, but the controls are a bit obscure.
If you don't put in some bounding boxes like trogdor458 suggested, how about a minimap or some kind of arrows to indicate which way you should be going?

Oh and by the way, procedural music ala notes with volume knobs is a really good idea. You ought to look into creating a chord progression though. Yeah, that's asking a lot, but procedural music doesn't mean much if it has no emotional significance.

There are pretty simple ways of formulizing your music, so for example you can set a low base tone with volume controlled the players velocity, and a higher tone at the 5th (1.5x frequency, 7 half steps away) controlled by distance to any other object or also by player velocity. Then you can easily inject some emotion by moving in and out the 3rd (happy) and flat 3rd (sad), and the 6th and 7th (pretty ear-catching tones, in my opinion). So let's say you make things sound said whenever you are ramming into a planet and happy whenever you're picking up points. As long as the distances were calculated right, they can control the volume of the 3rd and flat 3rd notes.

This is based on the major scale: 1-2-34-5-6-71'
Flats and sharps would be the dashes inbetween numbers and the apostrophe representing the next octave up.

Point is: Procedural music is awesome. Nice work.

I'm getting from pretty much everyone I show this too that the controls are way too confusing. Oops...

So I've updated it with two control types, arrow keys move the planet up/down/left/right shift repels and space attracts so it allows for the original controls, typical controls (which are still a bit wonky) or both. Any new idea for controlling are welcome.

@Rocky

Your thinking is sound, but at a certain point, it's hard to keep it separate from creating emotions and just sounding...off key. But I do plan to experiment with this. Right now, my notes are all from my guitar (G chord, capo'd on the 9th fret...so that's a D I think...) yes, that sound is actually my guitar, I do all my sounds with that thing.

@Viza

I'm still working on what exactly the point of this would be...but I will consider your suggestions. Also, I changed the planet sparks a bit, well, more than just a bit, I completely changed them. It induces lag, but looks amazing.

@happinessSam

It seems, once again, the main complaint is control, take a look at the new control, tell me what you think, perhaps suggest one of your own? I think a bounding box is a very good idea.

The only dissonance to worry about (if you're only playing notes in the major scale) would be from playing the 4th and 7th at the same time. I mean, that's still pretty sweet sometimes, but yeah, kinda dangerous. I guess you'd want to avoid playing any intervals that were just a half step apart and to be really safe don't play anything a whole step apart, but I also think the whole step interval sounds pretty sweet.

I'm at work so I haven't played the updated version yet, which might make this statement stupid:
wouldn't the gravity controls be kind of useless if you can move your planet with simple arrow controls?

The only use I can see for both would be if the arrow acceleration was limited so large gravitational forces could still over power them. Also, if you could collect points by raising your gravity and attracting them, that'd be awesome.

I'm just throwin out random ideas though. I don't know what your goal is.

Okay, just played anyway. . . . Pretty cool. I still think some depth would be nice, some aspect to play and experiment with, but I'm sure that's comin.

Just wanted to say that I hope this turns out to be something, I love the atmosphere.

There's only one level now?
or don't I understand to proceed?