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[astonish]

I am old school where variable name length actually hindered performance.

What language was that?!

 

[pixlexic]

What language was that?!

Basic and c back in the Tandy days.

where even a line return took up precious bytes.

 

[Alts]

JavaScript runs horribly on IE and fire fox .. Chrome and safari are the best.

Huh? http://arewefastyet.com/

What are you doing that's slow? What version of firefox are you using? I worked on an HTML5 game a few months ago, and while nothing compared to the performance of Chrome, Firefox was easily in second place above the rest.

 

[Jobbs]

Man, I haven't worked on my games in a while. I think I'll start working on them this weekend. Getting an email from Nintendo telling me they will be in touch with my kinda jump-started my motivation again!

www.whatgamesareyoutalkingaboutdude.com

 

[pixlexic]

Huh? http://arewefastyet.com/

What are you doing that's slow? What version of firefox are you using? I worked on an HTML5 game a few months ago, and while nothing compared to the performance of Chrome, Firefox was easily in second place above the rest.

I am using ff 22.0

JavaScript cycles vary greatly compared to chrome and safari.

I am using a delta time routine so if there is a great variation from one frame to the next you get jerky looking movement.

While not nearly as bad as IE it is noticeable.

 

[bumpkin]

Man, I haven't worked on my games in a while. I think I'll start working on them this weekend. Getting an email from Nintendo telling me they will be in touch with my kinda jump-started my motivation again!

I'm genuinely jealous. Wii U or 3DS?

Of course I haven't finished the custom game engine I started working on back in February

Spoiler

of last year

. No sense in having a developer license if I wouldn't actually produce anything with it.

 

[RelentlessRolento]

anyone doing the indie speed run? might do it next week

http://www.indiespeedrun.com/devsite/

 

[Manabanana]

Hey, I'm a graphic designer/illustrator looking for a project. I've just been doing stuff off elance for a bit, but I'd like to see a more serious project through. I do mostly 2D, some animation, UI, etc. I have some game design experience and I love puzzle and strategy games. Shoot me a PM or email (preferable) if you want to discuss stuff.

Portfolio: http://www.seaofleaves.net

Puzzle game stuff I'm working on now:

Isometric/pixely stuff:

 

[Feep]

Reminds me of the Perl code I wrote to make a Pokemon Online Battle Simulator when I was a teenager. No or few comments, variables named j, jj, k, l, etc. My code was horrifying.

As someone who now spends a lot of his life maintaining or extending old code, I respectfully recommend you reconsider your variable names, code, and/or lack of comments, but I suspect either this is test code or you don't want to. If you're the only programmer, you're only hurting yourself at any rate.

Eh. I think everything there is pretty well named except for "i" and "j", but I always use those letters to iterate through my soldier list (which I do on an unbelievably frequent basis). I suppose I could call them "currentSoldier" or something, or use an iterator, but I'm pretty consistent about it.

Makes sense to me. (shrug)

 

[Bamihap]

Adding a little bit of polish on the shoreline and water. The shoreline animates really cool.

 

[GulAtiCa]

I'm genuinely jealous. Wii U or 3DS?

Of course I haven't finished the custom game engine I started working on back in February

Spoiler

of last year

. No sense in having a developer license if I wouldn't actually produce anything with it.

Wii U. Them making Unity and the HTML5 stuff really peeked my interested.

www.whatgamesareyoutalkingaboutdude.com

haha, guess it would make sense to mention what exactly I'm talking about.

For most part, been working on 3 different game prototypes, mainly to dip my hand and get experience.

Pixel Defense
The first is just a simple HTML5 Tower Defense game. Was the first thing I made a few months back. I actually like it, and would like to actually release and clen it up/make it a full game (of it's nature). I actually have a theme for it I plan to redo tonight, a retro pixel theme.
http://games.gregthegamer.com/towerdefense/ (Works best in Chrome)

Super Kitty Cat
The 2nd game is was to dip my toes into Unity. Currently calling it Super Kitty Cat. heh. I really like the theme/looks of it. Mostly a prototype and not that exciting, but would like to turn it into an actual game. Just not sure exactly I will do with it, like should I make it a super hard game based upon the platforming/movements, or just regular platformer with some kind of cute theme.
http://games.gregthegamer.com/superkittycat/Web.html (ASDW for movements)
The first level is done, and 2nd level is designed but not all put together. Some clipping/contact bugs. But got me used to making different simple AIs, coins, moving platforms/etc.
So yeah, mostly a test game. But I do really like the style as I said, so I'm sure I'll use it in the future.

Zombie Shoot Shoot
The last one I started working on was a Zombie 2d top-down game. Kinda similar to Call of Duty: Zombies and Resident Evil: Revelations - Raid Mode. Mainly an arcade type of game. Still VERY early on. Mostly working in a custom AI pathfinder. Mostly works
Nothing to really show right now, mostly way early. lol. Actually might reverse it and have the player be a zombie trying to survive in a human controlled world/etc. lol

 

[bumpkin]

Wii U. Them making Unity and the HTML5 stuff really peeked my interested.

Ah. I think I'm far more interested in the straight-up SDKs since I'd probably wish to port my own engine than use Unity or HTML5l. When I started messing with iOS development, it gave me an indescribable rush seeing my App running on the iPhone I was holding in my hand for the first time. Having that same thing happen with a handheld game console or on the TV would probably beat it ten-fold.

Someday (I hope)!

 

[Blizzard]

Eh. I think everything there is pretty well named except for "i" and "j", but I always use those letters to iterate through my soldier list (which I do on an unbelievably frequent basis). I suppose I could call them "currentSoldier" or something, or use an iterator, but I'm pretty consistent about it.

Makes sense to me. (shrug)

If it makes sense to you and is self-documenting, then maybe it works for you. You're certainly way more successful than me at game developing so who am I to judge. Just so you understand that we're not criticizing the code because we want to be mean or bring you down, we're just warning you from experience that this sort of thing CAN end up biting you.

 

[Feep]

If it makes sense to you and is self-documenting, then maybe it works for you. You're certainly way more successful than me at game developing so who am I to judge. Just so you understand that we're not criticizing the code because we want to be mean or bring you down, we're just warning you from experience that this sort of thing CAN end up biting you.

True. I may do a big refactor at some point, but at least in terms of overall hierarchy, Unity is actually helping me keep the big framework stuff pretty organized.

If another programmer ever comes in (a distinct possibility), I'll being sitting down for a week or two and doing a massive comment infusion.

 

[razu]

Thank you!

And the answer is yes, the damage numbers are there to help you determine the effectiveness of your given weapon vs. the given enemy. There are some incidental specific case differences, as well as more sweeping differences -- For example, the rail shot is particularly effective against organic targets, and the ionic blast is particularly effective against anything mechanical.

There are also incremental damage modifiers/upgrades to be found, and you have a crit rate, all that stuff. I enjoy teaching people that an area might not be the place to go yet not always by there being a door you can't pass, but maybe there's an enemy you can barely dent. Certain types of enemies I've set it up so that if your damage rating is below a certain threshhold, you get an additional damage penalty against them. The idea being, conceptually, your damage rating doesn't just represent some even curve, but some kind of overall proficiency as well.

The bigger orange number is a crit.

Looking wicked

And more than that, the design behind it sounds FAQ-worthy! That's got to be an indie dev goal.. someone you don't know writing an FAQ for it..!

Jobbs, all those gifs look beautiful. Nice work.

It's been a long time since I posted in this thread. I've made a few small games since then, working on a puzzle game right now. Pretty simple, given two silhouettes on the left and right, you have to build the 3D structure that projects those two shadows.

The build I'm working on right now is still kind of messy, and my latest public build is really old. hope to get something playable (and recent) up here within a week. I'd love to get people to test it out, especially if they've got a low spec computer. I want to see just how low I can reasonably get.

screenshot:

gif of paradoxes:

Nice. It's super simple, and super appealing.

Hey, I'm a graphic designer/illustrator looking for a project. I've just been doing stuff off elance for a bit, but I'd like to see a more serious project through. I do mostly 2D, some animation, UI, etc. I have some game design experience and I love puzzle and strategy games. Shoot me a PM or email (preferable) if you want to discuss stuff.

Portfolio: http://www.seaofleaves.net

Puzzle game stuff I'm working on now:

Isometric/pixely stuff:

The isometric/pixely stuff looks lovely!



Man... there's some good things coming out of the people on this thread!

I think I'm going to do the next Ludum Dare, check http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ for details. If you've not done one before I strongly urge you to give it a go. Forget it being a competition, just get stuck in, fail, succeed... just make something stupid, and or amazing! The community is really good, and reading the stories of fellow Ludumers falling by the wayside makes for hilarious reading Go do it!

I've got a dev session set up with my son tomorrow morning. I'm modelling skate wheels and he's researching grafiti

 

[JulianImp]

True. I may do a big refactor at some point, but at least in terms of overall hierarchy, Unity is actually helping me keep the big framework stuff pretty organized.

If another programmer ever comes in (a distinct possibility), I'll being sitting down for a week or two and doing a massive comment infusion.

AFAIK, i and j are very common iterator counter names. I tend to use them all the time in for loops.

Easy to recognize variable names are something I learned from a friend and classmate of mine a few years ago (alongside the quirk of coding in spanish). Before that I used extremely abreviated variable names, which wouldn't have felt out of place back when filenames had up to eight characters in length, which made many things way harder to read when I eventually got back to them for some reason.

Another quirk I copied from a workmate was spacing lines of code that did something similar in the exact same way, like:

someVariable      = 1;
someOtherVariable = 2;

GameObject.Instantiate(blockPrefab , new Transform(i    , 0, 0), Quaternion.Identity);
GameObject.Instantiate(playerPrefab, new Transform(i + 1, 0, 0), Quaternion.Identity);

One last thing I tend to do is leave the opening curly brace in the same line as the statement that belongs to it rather than adding a line break in between them, like "if (x > otherX) {".

 

[Feep]

Another quirk I copied from a workmate was spacing lines of code that did something similar in the exact same way, like:

someVariable      = 1;
someOtherVariable = 2;

GameObject.Instantiate(blockPrefab , new Transform(i    , 0, 0), Quaternion.Identity);
GameObject.Instantiate(playerPrefab, new Transform(i + 1, 0, 0), Quaternion.Identity);

I do this!

One last thing I tend to do is leave the opening curly brace in the same line as the statement that belongs to it rather than adding a line break in between them, like "if (x > otherX) {".

I do NOT do this. It makes the opening and ending curly brace not on the same horizontal line, which makes it harder to see where blocks of code begin and end...

 

[GulAtiCa]

Ah. I think I'm far more interested in the straight-up SDKs since I'd probably wish to port my own engine than use Unity or HTML5l. When I started messing with iOS development, it gave me an indescribable rush seeing my App running on the iPhone I was holding in my hand for the first time. Having that same thing happen with a handheld game console or on the TV would probably beat it ten-fold.

Someday (I hope)!

My main expertise in programming is in PHP/HTML5/JS/etc, aka web development (it's my main job), hence why the Wii U stuff, as well as Unity (via UnityScript) in general interested me greatly. Unity also being able to port a game to mobile/other console/etc also nice.

If I do by chance become a Wii U developer and actually make games for it, I might eventually try to become a 3DS developer. Of course, would have to code it natievely, which would be cool to learn a new language (or more likely re-learn a language like C or whatever 3DS eShop games are coded in as I've likely haven't used that since college)

I do NOT do this. It makes the opening and ending curly brace not on the same horizontal line, which makes it harder to see where blocks of code begin and end...

Heh, I do that as well. I like being able to clearly see my code and how it all goes together, even if it makes it long. Drives one of my co-workers made. haha.

 

[lordfroakie]

GulAtiCa, you got an email from nintendo? Same here! I expect Nintendo to respond back no later than, late oct or nov if we're lucky. I found my old html5 beginners book, going to read through it later

 

[smokeandmirrors]

I
I do NOT do this. It makes the opening and ending curly brace not on the same horizontal line, which makes it harder to see where blocks of code begin and end...

Yo my man

someFunction(var 1...var n)
{
    //some code
}

4lyfe

can't stand the other way.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

^ I'm serious, I'm a rocket scientist! xD Thank you!

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxEAFyTM9GLvWGhkQmNMeUEtdHc/edit?usp=sharing

It's an aif file

 

[Bel_Air_Jeff]

All of my life, I have been creating music, recording music, and playing video games. Just recently, I've had a strong passion to score a video game. It is taking my two favorite hobbies and throwing them together.

So, I'm giving out an offer to any indie developer out there that needs some music for their game. I will completely score and do the soundtrack to yr game for FREE. I'm just looking to have some fun and produce a quality experience.

I'm one of the gamers out there that think that sound is just as important as gameplay. My favorite game of all time is LoZ: Ocarina of Time. This game blended music and sound to make one of the most influential and memorable games of all time. My goal is to do the same for your game. I'm a huge fan of Koji Kondo and his compositions are where I get most of influence from when it comes to video game music.

I'm willing to use a combination of REAL instruments/MIDI for YOUR score.
I have several music projects if you want to see my credibility:

Lean Horse Marathon:
http://leanhorsemarathon.bandcamp.com/album/reflections

Sea Patterns:
http://thepoweroftheheartisone.bandcamp.com/

Message me for contact information!


Didn't know this thread existed!
Made my own thread for this post! Probably should have posted here too!

 

[razu]

Yo my man

someFunction(var 1...var n)
{
    //some code
}

4lyfe

can't stand the other way.

STRONGLY AGREE!!

 

[RobotNinjaHornets]

Doesn't having the curly brace on a new line cause problems sometimes in JS or something?

 

[smokeandmirrors]

Well whilst it can be a pain in the ass, I am kind of enjoying working with OpenGL in C++.

Working on a simple 'game' of capture the flag to see if I can do it, so let's see how far I can take this.

Doesn't having the curly brace on a new line cause problems sometimes in JS or something?

Haven't used JS yet, so if that's the case I may have issues when I do. Heh.

 

[MrOddbird]

Jumping on the GifCam train:

 

[Alts]

Doesn't having the curly brace on a new line cause problems sometimes in JS or something?

For objects literals, yes. For conditionals and functions (and really anything else), no.

 

[Cedric]

Hey everyone, I realize this thread is most likely bombarded with these types of questions daily but I don't really know any other community. With that said, I'm interested in making a game for fun. However, I'm a bit lost as to what program's best for me. I've been making games on RPG maker since like 4th grade elementary. A couple of years ago I started using Game Maker. Although I started by using the drag and drop interface, I quickly switched to the code side of things because not only I felt it was more interesting, I figured it would eventually be the more rewarding experience on the long run. I ended up abandoning the use of Game Maker because I own a Mac, and the only version there was was FULL of glitches and had far less options than the windows ones (and from what I gather from the OP, is no longer supported by GM). I'd like to try a program that let's you use code but that also has a lot of beginner support (like a community with many tutorials...) because I'm still really new to this, but I think I'm ready and motivated. Also, I only plan on doing 2D games, so to my understanding Unity is not for me (at least not right now).

 

[omg_mjd]

Hey everyone, I realize this thread is most likely bombarded with these types of questions daily but I don't really know any other community. With that said, I'm interested in making a game for fun. However, I'm a bit lost as to what program's best for me. I've been making games on RPG maker since like 4th grade elementary. A couple of years ago I started using Game Maker. Although I started by using the drag and drop interface, I quickly switched to the code side of things because not only I felt it was more interesting, I figured it would eventually be the more rewarding experience on the long run. I ended up abandoning the use of Game Maker because I own a Mac, and the only version there was was FULL of glitches and had far less options than the windows ones (and from what I gather from the OP, is no longer supported by GM). I'd like to try a program that let's you use code but that also has a lot of beginner support (like a community with many tutorials...) because I'm still really new to this, but I think I'm ready and motivated. Also, I only plan on doing 2D games, so to my understanding Unity is not for me (at least not right now).

I hear good things about LÖVE 2D. It's cross-platform (Mac, Windows, Linux) and you build your games by coding in Lua.

It's free and the community seems pretty active and friendly.

 

[missile]

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxEAFyTM9GLvWGhkQmNMeUEtdHc/edit?usp=sharing

It's an aif file

Awesome, really! I like it very much. :+ What was the program you composed
this song with again?

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

Awesome, really! I like it very much. :+ What was the program you composed
this song with again?

That was just GarageBand.

 

[Bomber Bob]

guys curly braces k&r style or bust

 

[Blizzard]

Doesn't having the curly brace on a new line cause problems sometimes in JS or something?

I would like to be enlightened if this is the case, but I've never used a curly brace language that had problems with a brace on a new line. *edit* Oh, it seems like that could be the case in Javascript because lines do not have to end with semicolons.

I also like it because it clearly shows where the block starts and ends, and VIM (I'm crazy and often use it) has a quick [[ shortcut to jump back to the previous 0-column block. If your function has { at the end of the line, then you can't jump to it that way, and you have to go all ][% to get there instead. Clearly more awkward.

And lastly, I like the curly brace because it gives vertical space between the condition/function/loop and the body. Sometimes you get a lot of text jammed together otherwise.

 

[D4Danger]

Doesn't having the curly brace on a new line cause problems sometimes in JS or something?

yes because js has automatic semicolon insertion

for example if you were to write

return
{
  "message": "Hello"
}

or

return
  "hello"

it would stick a semicolon after return and ignore the rest

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...javascripts-automatic-semicolon-insertion-asi

 

[motorsep]

Jumping on the GifCam train:

Neat! What engine is it?

Btw, how do you guys make those animated gifs?

 

[Servbot24]

Neat! What engine is it?

Btw, how do you guys make those animated gifs?

Download GifCam 2.0 or LICEcap if you have a Mac, very easy to use.

 

[motorsep]

Well, I am still somewhat far off from posting gif movies here, but here is a little update on Steel Storm 2:

P.S. Is there a way to use html code here to make thumbnailed images with links to larger ones

 

[razu]

lol (no offense razu - I'd be happy to get your numbers)

I missed these posts... you're all way mean and I'm never talking to you again, and I'm never making games again!!

Oh wait, I'm getting my boy's skateBOX game to control nice using touch input right now! Been making ramps today, that's a good saturday job!

Good luck with the game man!

 

[razu]

That was just GarageBand.

GarageBand for me too. You an get some pretty decent music done in a short space of time. Auto-mode with manual override worked out quite well for me.

 

[smokeandmirrors]

Well, I am still somewhat far off from posting gif movies here, but here is a little update on Steel Storm 2:


P.S. Is there a way to use html code here to make thumbnailed images with links to larger ones

Impressive!

Wrap the thumbnail url tags I think...

[URL="image_address"]thumbnailimage.whatever[*/URL]

Anyway not necessarily impressive but I finally got some sort of procedural generation going.

Still got some tidying to do with it, but I'll be damned if I don't feel accomplished.

 

[jrDev]

Yo my man

someFunction(var 1...var n)
{
    //some code
}

4lyfe

can't stand the other way.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong

 

[outunderthestars]

Adding a little bit of polish on the shoreline and water. The shoreline animates really cool.

Where can i follow the progress of this game?

 

[motorsep]

Impressive!

Thanks

Anyway not necessarily impressive but I finally got some sort of procedural generation going.

That's all that counts - getting it done. Plus, procedural generations isn't the easiest stuff, so - good job

 

[Jobbs]

To anyone who has said something nice to me, I read your comment and absorbed it into my body and became stronger. My very body.

My kickstarter campaign begins tomorrow (monday). I think I'll launch it in the evening EST (unless someone has a better idea).

Incidentally, studying up a bit on construct 2 and tinkering around -- I think I've managed to identify the major points of the program and how they can be related to what I've learned in my year with stencyl. VERY promising software. Out of the box gamepad support, plugins for things like spriter, hardware acceleration, webgl shaders, and on... If my KS doesn't meet its goal I'll probably shift my focus to working with C2.

 

[Sycle]

Yo my man

someFunction(var 1...var n)
{
    //some code
}

4lyfe

can't stand the other way.

Totally agree! Someone got me onto this a while back actually and originally I thought it seemed wasteful and pedantic, I've noticed blocks are so much more readable now.

Slightly more controversially, I also picked up the habit of using m_ for member variables and found it helped me identify scope, especially when I revisit stuff I haven't touched in a bit.

 

[Chaos]

My kickstarter campaign begins tomorrow (monday). I think I'll launch it in the evening EST (unless someone has a better idea).

Good luck with it, the game is looking great so far.

 

[desu]

If my KS doesn't meet its goal I'll probably shift my focus to working with C2.

It will reach it's goal, I would be pretty sad if such an amazing looking game doesn't hit it's goal. My money is ready to be pledged as soon as it goes up .

 

[eKongDiddy]

Hello, my name is Elijah! I have this thing called senior project coming up for school and I wanted to build a video game. I need a mentor who will help me develop the game. Would anyone be willing to help me? Here is my email if you want to contact me: elijah_k_hines@yahoo.com

I want to develop a small indie game for an ipad or pc

 

[BomberMouse]

Hello, my name is Elijah! I have this thing called senior project coming up for school and I wanted to build a video game. I need a mentor who will help me develop the game. Would anyone be willing to help me? Here is my email if you want to contact me: elijah_k_hines@yahoo.com

I want to develop a small indie game for an ipad or pc

I don't want to be that guy, but I guess it needs to be said. I'm sure most users here will gladly give you pointers and help but it seems like you want someone to do all the work for you.

Do some research, you can start by reading the OP then post your specific doubts.

 

[missile]

Variable center of pressure.

The blue dot indictes the center of pressure. At lift-off the rocket is
pitched by just a 1/1000th degrees simulating sort of a disturbance. The pitch
leads the rocket to be slightly unsymmetrical around its flight path. Upon
reaching maximum height, the center of pressure is below the center of mass
(small moving point slightly below the center of pressure during the first two
seconds at lift-off). After reaching maximum height, the rocket will start to
descend due to gravity and will start to flip over due to the aerodynamic
forces (lift and drag, drag only in this example) acting on the rocket. The
point of action of these aerodynamical forces can be thought off as acting
through the center of pressure. With respect to the given example here, the
drag force pulls at the center of pressure while the rocket is descending at a
slight angle. This, essentially, produces a torque around the center of mass
leading the rocket to flip over. Note: The strong oscillatory motion will be
damped by a lifting force, which isn't implemented yet. And for the sake of
completeness, the rocket burns fuel out of the lower section and as such loses
mass making the lower stage much lighter then the upper stage, as one can see
by the moving center of mass. So it becomes way easy for the drag force to
flip the lower stage over.


Backdraft: For those who are more technically interested.
Due to an ingenious thought I had, objects are now able to rotate solely by
aerodynamic forces applied to them. I finally found a way to approximate the
pressure around an object and was able to compute the center of pressure from
it where the lift and drag forces are (better; should in general be) applied.
And since the center of pressure is usually at a distance to the center of
mass, a torque will be generated making objects start rotate about its center
of mass.

The classic parabolic flight path of a rocket. The rotation of the rocket is
solely due to drag with respect to the (moving) center of mass.

Well, it is virtually impossible without doing a proper fluid simulation to
get the pressure distribution around any objects for many different attitudes
-- that's why we have lift and drag coefficients to begin with. If we would
have this distribution, we could actually compute lift and drag from it. Of
course, the pressure distribution around an object can be computed by doing a
full fluid simulation, but to get the same lift and drag data from such a
computation compared to the lift and drag data from, for example, a NACA
airfoil would require a very accurate simulation, which would take hours to
compute to yield the pressure field. Having the pressure around an object is
one thing. Computing lift, drag, and the center of pressure is another one.

Now lets say we got lift and drag from somewhere. The most important question
is; where do we apply these forces? These forces can be thought of as acting
through just one point, i.e. the center of pressure. But where to get this
center from when there is no pressure distribution we can compute it from?
Engineers have circumvented this problem for airfoils by having found a point
similar to the center of pressure which doesn't change like the center of
pressure does (which changes with the angles of attack, usually). And this
point is known as the aerodynamic center which usually doesn't coincide with
the center of pressure. But the difference is accounted for by including
another datum within the lift and drag data charts, i.e. the momentum
coefficient accounting for the pitching moment an airfoil experiences due to
the difference in pressure distribution below and above the airfoil.

(As you can see, I've made some progress towards the wings! )

Hence, having lift, drag, and the pitching moment, one doesn't need a pressure
distribution. But now guess you don't have any airfoil with known data.
Instead you may have kind of a different object. Now where do we apply the
(possibly user created) lift and drag forces? At the center of mass? Well, you
can do it that way, but your objects won't start to rotate, since, usually,
the center of pressure is at a distance (> 0) to the center of mass. And any
force acting through the center of pressure in a line different than the one
connecting these two centers will start to produce a torque making the object
rotate, which is way cool -- and gives my expensive angular momentum equation
something to shine through!

One solution would be to manually set the center of pressure for each object.
If chosen wisely, one can get good results this way. However, this will be
sort of a trail and error approach and you will need a good understanding of
some aerodynamics nevertheless. And once you change the geometry, everything
will be off.

And we would still have to consider that the center of pressure moves while
an object moves through the air, i.e. changes its attitude. So usually we
have to account for this as well, which is impossible until the pressure
distribution is trivial or you get it from a fluid simulation.

However, I drew a pretty good conclusion from a fundamental observation, i.e.
all aerodynamic forces (and as such the pressure) are proportional to the area
of a surface.

That means, if we change the surface area the pressure will change as well,
and with it the center of pressure of the whole body. Hence, the center of
pressure is dependent on the surface area, of course. Given the pressure it
would be possible to compute the center of pressure with respect to the
surface area. But we don't have the pressure.

Here is how I solved this problem; I did a very rude approximation of the
pressure around the rocket and have integrate it around the surface area of
the rocket leading to a, well, center of pressure! Well, it was a lil more
difficult as these lines here say.

The approximation can be improved by inputting a better pressure distribution.
It's an idea of mine to use my oncoming fluid simulator to compute a very
rough pressure distribution in realtime, or, if this isn't possible, to
compute some fixed pressure distributions and use interpolation in-between.
Would be quite a novelty if that is going to work, yielding some awesome
dynamics. Anyhow. Now someone could than say; given this rough approximation,
why not also compute lift an drag from it? Well the problem is, one would
get very bad lift and drag values for the object at hand. The simulation needs
to be very detailed to get good values. However, with respect to the center of
pressure we just need a rough location which can be off by some margin.

The cool thing with this model is that I don't have to set the center of
pressure by trail and error. And best of all, the center of pressure will
move with respect to the surface area, since it depends on it. Hence, objects
can change their shape and will as such change the position of the center of
pressure as well -- influencing the objects behavior through the air.

For the games I have in mind this means that I can for example add retractable
or extendible surfaces to a craft to change the crafts center of pressure
modifying its racing characteristics. Possibly at runtime.

Well, I essentially came to this idea of approximating the center of pressure
while looking at the (crisscross) fins of a standard rocket. I knew they are
used for stabilization. But I didn't knew how by just looking at the
aerodynamic forces like lift and drag they generate. But I knew also that a
usual engineer won't knew about the exact aerodynamics of the fins at all, yet
he places some of them aft the rocket. So I skipped lift and drag and
considered the pressure from which these quantities are generated. And than it
become clear to me; by enlarging the aft section of the rocket in area with
the help of the fins, there will be more area exposed to the air, which will
ultimately influence the pressure of the entire rocket, esp. at the aft
section, producing a larger area where pressure forces can act. This,
essentially, pulls the center of pressure towards the aft section of the
rocket! Hence, increasing the fins will pull the center of pressure down. Why
is that important? Because the center of pressure needs to be below the center
of mass to make the rocket stable during ascend. So either one rises the
center of mass, which is may more complicated due to design considerations, or
one puts larger fins aft the rocket to make it more stable. That's the deal
with all the fins! But one can use them also to navigate/trim the rocket as
well.

So even while you don't know anything about the pressure distribution around
a rocket, you can add some fins aft to it and it will become more stable
during ascend. By understanding why this mechanism works out of the box
without killing the rockets aerodynamics, I was able to implement a model for
approximating the center of pressure for a given object.

For my rockets this means that they will now start to turn solely by the
aerodynamic forces. To make it clear, I don't have to rotate the rocket
myself (the nozzle is held fixed in all the animations). The aerodynamic
forces will do the job.

Currently, I have only a drag model implemented, lift will follow soon, but
drag is already enough to make the rocket turn over while the center of
pressure is below the center of mass and the rocket is slightly tilt to the
flight path descending downwards. This, essentially, is an instable
configuration;

The rocket to the right has more surface area (fins not shown) attached to the
lower stage pulling the center of pressure more downwards.

The rocket to the left has the same amount of surface area attached to the
upper stage as the one to the right has on its lower stage. Both rockets are
pitched by 10 degrees at lift-off. As one can see, the drag force pulls the
rockets in quite different directions.

Same as above, different perspective.


This model here is currently in an early stage of development, but even at
this stage it's already quite useful and delivers rather good results.

Everything written and show here is just for the purpose of programming cool
video games for the masses. Going deeper is what pushes me forward. And I hope
you guys and gals try to do the same. Don't give up!