dahnraelz's messages

Well, it’s not that hard to implement actually – all of the complicated math is in deriving the formula that you put into your program. The formula itself is pretty “magic”.

The most important thing about learning how to do it is to just experiment with it. I believe the last link has a demo in it that you can muck around with – otherwise I’m sure you can find plenty on the web (maybe a java applet or something).

To understand it, just think of it like this:
Your current code simulates physics by making the approximation that the motion of everything is really just short little line segments all joined together – that is, speed and acceleration are constant for short periods of time. So every time step, you find a line that does a “good job” of approximating what the motion should be.

The RK method is a way to find a better approximation – one in the form of a curve. This curve happens to have specific properties that make it give a much more accurate answer (the exact nature of this shouldn’t be important to you at this point).

To be honest, almost all mathematics needed for game programming (except, perhaps, graphics stuff which requires some rather crazy linear algrebra) is very simple – most game devs do not have degrees in mathematics or physics, so it is necessarily the case :) There are plenty of books/tutorials on game physics, and if you make little flash game “experiments”, I believe you will be able to learn these techniques in time.

As for the school thing – never fear. I learned very little in school myself, I had to get everything from books and experimentation. You just need to find the method of learning that works best for you (clearly not lectures) and use that.

If you do update this to make a game, you might consider implementing a Runge Kutta integrator for solving the dynamics of the system. There’s an excellent walkthrough/tutorial/homework assignement which can be found here:

The relevant equations can be seen here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=UQW_VL2H56IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22numerical+recipes%22&ei=Kwk3SenNEIysNrTIjAg&client=firefox-a#PPA900,M1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runge-Kutta

http://books.google.com/books?id=8JdS0h0ZOrkC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=runge+kutta+method+game&source=bl&ots=iiZLWLK904&sig=feAh0xi-UCTb_dC5-MhZ-An3yww&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

and probably most relevant to your interests:
http://physics.hardwire.cz/index.php?action=show&parent_id=43&sortby=order

I highly suggest learning about RK integration, as just about every physics-based game should use that or something similar.

If you have any questions about it, feel free to give me a shout. It’s been a while since I wrote physics simulations, but I’m sure I could pry it out of the dusty recesses of my mind :)

Oh, as a full game it’s not that great, but as a playable game mechanic demo, it’s fantastic.

I suppose I was most interested in seeing the code because after programming in just about every other major language, I’ve decided to learn Flash, and it’d help to have something to tinker with – I learn best by making small changes to existing systems, there is something about the instant gratification… besides I think that the most original ideas come from experimentation.

Greetings!

Elastic is a very cool concept, and I’m interested in exploring additional weapon types/enemy behaviors. Is there any possibility that you would consider releasing the source of the project so that it can be modified and experimented with?

I think this game would make an excellent tutorial in its own right! Also it’s fun to play, but I believe that several additional complexities to the core gameplay would need to be added to give it an acceptable amount of replayability.

Congrats on placing! I agree with other posters that you should have won :)