implement conservation of momentum about space-nerds-in-space HOT 9 CLOSED

Working as designed.

from space-nerds-in-space.

I thought that might be so, but hadn't found anything discussing the topic or describing the design intent. Can you say more about what seems fun to you about this approach?

And is it possible to adjust the drag coefficient on local installations or server setups?

from space-nerds-in-space.

You can go on the demon screen turn on the console and type "help player" and see a few tweakable variables. There's a PLAYER_VELOCITY_DAMPING that can be set as low as 0.1. If you want to experiment with lower values (e.g. 0), you can edit snis_server.c...

19175         { "PLAYER_VELOCITY_DAMPING",
19176                 "DECELERATION FACTOR OF PLAYER SHIP",
19177                 &player_velocity_damping, 'f',
19178                 0.1, 0.9999, PLAYER_VELOCITY_DAMPING, 0, 0, 0, 0 },

Change that 0.1 to whatever you want.

from space-nerds-in-space.

The so-called "physics" in the game probably doesn't work like you expect.

The direction the ship moves is influenced directly by the direction it is pointing. So for instance, I don't believe it is possible to "set PLAYER_VELOCITY_DAMPING = 0", then fly in one direction, then turn the ship 180 degrees and be floating backwards. Instead your velocity will (not instantly, but over some short time period) be turned towards the direction the ship is facing.

from space-nerds-in-space.

and type "help player"

I meant to say, type "vars player", "vars" lets you search for tweakable variables.

from space-nerds-in-space.

The direction the ship moves is influenced directly by the direction it is pointing.

What do you like about this approach?

from space-nerds-in-space.

What do you like about this approach?

1. It's already implemented.
2. It's unsurprising to players. They can easily steer and control the ship.
3. Driving with newtonian physics is difficult and not fun.

Here is a patch which is something like newtonian physics for you to try. (It's not quite there, there is some velocity damping still, but close enough for you to be able to see how it sucks.)

newton.txt

Once you apply the patch, on the demon screen, you can type "set player_newtonian_physics = 1.0" to enable it.

Note: "standard orbit" gets broken by this.

from space-nerds-in-space.

When I apply that patch, and recompile, the client disconnects from the server almost immediately after joining. Do I need to patch, and build from, a specific previous version of the codebase?

from space-nerds-in-space.

Hmm. Just tried it, and it works for me.

You can check snis_client_log.txt and snis_server_log.txt and see if it says anything interesting in there.

But I suspect some dependency is imperfectly described by the makefile and something didn't get recompiled that needs to, but probably not because of this patch, but because of some other change I've made, as a guess, probably 2832d4cd4553a86bf78947e30f60eb6bb5ba7d98 is the culprit, because it touches lots of things, but that's only a guess.

Try "make mostly-clean; make" and see if that helps.

from space-nerds-in-space.