But the physical system is Imperfect

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Castle
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Joined: Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:25 am

But the physical system is Imperfect

Postby Castle » Tue Nov 20, 2012 4:59 am

I was quite fascinated by this novel game, by its dark background, its wonderful gameplay and its precise physical system where Newton's law and conservation of momentum law reflect.

To know how sophisticated is the physics, I did a simple experiment:
Manage to stop the player's mote at the world's center.
Suddenly accelerate to left by shooting off a big mote.
Then player's mote bounced back by the left wall while the other mote bounced by the right wall, and they merge again.

According to the law of conservation of momentum, the reunited mote will stop again. However the result shows that the player's mote continue to move right without much speeding down. Several other experiment reflect the same truth--Momentum is not conservative during abruption or combination.

I have got through the game with the craze about physics, but now this obvious bug of physical system really make me feel stuck. Perhaps it is not a bug but aid to players or something else, but I really want a true explanation,thanks.

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eddybox
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Re: But the physical system is Imperfect

Postby eddybox » Tue Nov 20, 2012 11:13 am

Ah, physics! You're right about momentum not being conserved on mass-ejection (by design, to "aid" the player), but momentum *is* conserved on mote-mote collision.

I could jump into the details, but first I'd like to highly recommend this awesome analysis by Alex Christofferson:
http://tatnallsbg.blogspot.ca/2011/11/c ... paper.html

Curious to hear what you think. :)

Cheers!

Castle
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:25 am

Re: But the physical system is Imperfect

Postby Castle » Wed Nov 21, 2012 5:07 am

I've got it. I still wonder if it's possible to set up levels without this physical modification as new challenges. Otherwise, you can aid players by setting up higher ejection velocity, which could similarly provide higher delta-v for player. What unexpected will happen?


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