Developer diary: Game Physics - Part 1

[Snowcrash]

Subsequent to Art Director Nick Ebenhoch’s developer diary about Black Prophecy’s art direction, Technical Director Cyrus Preuss now presents the mechanical side of the game. Beginning with an introduction to the basics of physics programming, Cyrus will outline how each single area of the game physics work hand in hand to create the whole picture.

Don't miss part one of this diary and feel free to discuss it in this thread!

[LasseBlutströmen]

Interesting read, thanks. Will the game support PhysX? I think not, at least not as far as gameplay is concerned. It might however allow for more detailed explosions and debries.

OT:
What I find interesting as well is what it says at the top of the screenshots: "Black Prophecy release build". I take it the beta is going to be pretty much the final game, which is good.

[wannie]

Nice article on basic game physics, seeing the final build also made me chuckle abit

Good thing about physics will be dogfights in asteroid belts! that will be sweet if your computer can handle it!

[Brammers]

Very interesting article, this technical stuff is my kind of lunchtime reading material.

Originally Posted by LasseBlutströmen

Interesting read, thanks. Will the game support PhysX? I think not, at least not as far as gameplay is concerned. It might however allow for more detailed explosions and debries.

I agree with you, I don't think BP will support PhysX, but it would have KK's own version. (Called PhysiKK? maybe. ) I would be interesting to hear your reasons behind it.

My reasons for having their own physics engine. If Player A has PhysX Version 1.01 and Player B has PhysX 1.20, how can you be sure everyone gets the same reasults when Players collide? This isn't so important in a single player game, but is important in a MMO game for consistancy.

Just my 2p's worth. (Erm whats the currency in BP BTW?)

[Delphi]

Originally Posted by Brammers

Very interesting article, this technical stuff is my kind of lunchtime reading material.



I agree with you, I don't think BP will support PhysX, but it would have KK's own version. (Called PhysiKK? maybe. ) I would be interesting to hear your reasons behind it.

My reasons for having their own physics engine. If Player A has PhysX Version 1.01 and Player B has PhysX 1.20, how can you be sure everyone gets the same reasults when Players collide? This isn't so important in a single player game, but is important in a MMO game for consistancy.

Just my 2p's worth. (Erm whats the currency in BP BTW?)

I haven't read the article so I can't comment on that (damn the busy days at work.... and stupid undergraduates :P), but to the comment bram they could enforce a consistancy check with the PhysX binaries so that everyone is on the same version. However I imagine having the physics calculated in such an open way on the client machine could lead to some very easy ways to inject information into the stream, i.e. hacks where you cannot be bumped etc.

Who knows! Although I like PhysKKs!

Delphi

[Parallax]

Originally Posted by LasseBlutströmen

Interesting read, thanks. Will the game support PhysX? I think not, at least not as far as gameplay is concerned. It might however allow for more detailed explosions and debries.

OT:
What I find interesting as well is what it says at the top of the screenshots: "Black Prophecy release build". I take it the beta is going to be pretty much the final game, which is good.

I liked the article. Nice reminder of uni.

As for PhysX, I do not want it included at all. Not only does it not run properly on my desktop pc but it will most likely be something that will reduce the performance on my laptop, and it's weak enough as it is. Mirror's Edge refused to turn PhysX off and so was unplayable for me. I don't want the same for BP.

PhysiKK ftw.

YackYack, if the BP client is in its Release Build then some system requirements would be very much appreciated by the community

[LasseBlutströmen]

That's why I said I can't see PhysX being used as far as gameplay goes. Folks who can't or don't want to run PhysX hardware would be screwed. However, as far as effects are concerned, a bit more (ok, loads) debries here and there would surely be a welcome addition for those who do have such hardware, and still would be compatible with those who don't.

It could work similar to Batman: Arkham Asylum. PhysX users get smoke and dust and whatnot, the others don't. For BP, I'd like to see smoke and dust and debries for both parties, but the PhysX faction could have more of them.

I have a Radeon 4890 plugged into my gaming rig, so with Nvidias current driver policy regarding PhysX, I'm out of the loop either way.

[Snowcrash]

It took some time to catch Cyrus for some answers to your questions as he was on a business trip but now I got some more information for you.

Will the game support PhysX?

No. The game will not support PhysX. Instead the game is using a slightly modified version of the Bullet Physics Engine.

That's why I said I can't see PhysX being used as far as gameplay goes. Folks who can't or don't want to run PhysX hardware would be screwed.

Like the answer to the previous question already said. No one will be screwed, as we are not using the PhysX engine.

According to the pictures in the diary it looks like that bodies, ships, etc. have no energy shields. Therefore my question would be if these are laid around the model as additional collision detection or are they already included in the existing detection?

Ships and other objects can have energy shields. Those have just not been debug rendered in the screenshots you have seen. And yes it's additional 'collision geometry' used to detect shield hits. Meaning that shield collision geometry does not have any impact on the physics simulation. The permeable character of those objects is one of the extensions we applied to the Bullet physics engine.