Project: Marionette UFO
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Inspired by the Phizix Chipmunk physics extension for MMF2, and horrible B-grade sci-fi movies, Marionette UFO is a game where you control a flying saucer by moving the stick it's hanging from. Right now, it's little more than a physics-based minigame, but if I can get the movement polished up with some feedback, it might make a fun sidescrolling shooter.
Engine Test (1/10/08 ): http://realnoyb.googlepages.com/MarionetteUFOTest2-custom.exe (530 kb)
Arrows to move, z/x to rotate.
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Very Cool
By: Noyb
On: 12th Jan 08, 09:17:52
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Fluid Ropes pt. 2
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Posted 15th Jan 08, by Noyb
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Based on some feedback, I opened up some of the constants in the engine test. You can now toy around with the UFO mass, the gravity constant, plus how fast you can move/turn the stick.
Recommended settings: 5 partitions, 200 speed, 2 rotation, 200 mass, 200 gravity. It seems to break down if you get any one constant larger by more than a power of ten, but feel free to play around with the numbers.
I'd appreciate feedback on what settings feel good to you.
Download: http://realnoyb.googlepages.com/MarionetteUFOTest2-custom.exe (530 kb)
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Fluid Ropes
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Posted 10th Jan 08, by Noyb
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So I got in contact with Werbad, one of the extension developers, on the Clickteam forums and the solution was to add a sliding joint with a min of 0 and max of the string's length in addition to the fluid chain of pivot joints. Thanks to his help, the fluid string build is feeling more responsive. It isn't quite as responsive as the original rigid string one, but since it feels more natural, it might be a bit more intuitive. It also let me make the string pieces and the UFO more massive, which seemed to help the feel.
Anyway, I redid the original minigames with the fluid strings. I haven't quite decided how many partitions feels best, but I'm leaning towards 6. The joints still break down around double digits, but at least the lower numbers feel better. Download Link: http://realnoyb.googlepages.com/MarionetteUFOTest2.exe (520 kb)
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Test Engine/Minigames
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Posted 9th Jan 08, by Noyb
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Well, damn. It's been a while. Haven't done anything Click-related since making a level for Jon Smeby's Teh Forum Game. So, I was lurking on the Clickteam forums, I saw that Multimedia Fusion 2 had an honest-to-goodness physics engine implemented for it. I then remembered a game idea I had around the time of Tigsource's B-game competition: Marionette UFO.
My initial vision was to make a side-scrolling game based off of those old B-movies where the spacecraft were hanging off of a rod by strings, where the player would directly control the rod to move the spacecraft. I spent a couple nights learning the physics engine and refamiliarizing myself with MMF2 before making a quick engine test minigame.
I'm pretty sure I'm not ready to move on from this point. First off, I'm trying to find a decent balance between the indirection offered by controlling the stick and the responsiveness of direct controls. I guess what I could do is to shorten the string length to make it more responsive or increase the air resistance to lower the pendulum effect. Also, this build uses rigid strings, which means the player could easily support the weight in the air from below. I'm not entirely sure *why* that doesn't appeal to me, possibly just aesthetics. Regardless, the physics engine doesn't seem to support fluid joints, and my attempts to simulate them by a series of rigid joints connecting negligible mass bodies resulted in an unplayable mess. Perhaps the solution would just be to make sure that the top rows don't have any less chance of containing an obstacle than the bottom. Also, it's fairly easy to push the spacecraft offscreen in the corners, which I've implemented an ugly stopgap solution of physically limiting the x/y coordinates of the weight. I'm not entirely sure whether the problem is with the physics engine, the extension developer's implementation of it, or my implementation of the extension. I was also thinking of making this mouse controlled (click + drag to move the stick, click + drag on the ends of the stick to move and rotate), but decided to use keyboard controls for now before worrying about how the physics engine might break down at those potentially higher speeds.
Anyway, I'm looking for feedback on the movement system of this game. You use the arrow keys to move the stick, and z/x to rotate it. A UFO (a gray square at the moment) hangs from the stick by two parallel strings. There are two minigames to test out the movement. The first one's goal is to make sure no diamonds collide with the UFO, and int the second one the diamonds cut the strings but the stick collides with them. I'm more interested in feedback on the movement system, but I realize that trying to make these minigames fun would be a good start towards seeing if a larger project with this engine would be good.
Download Link: http://realnoyb.googlepages.com/MarionetteUFOTest.exe (503 kb)
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