Author Topic: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion  (Read 8213 times)

Offline Wundsalz

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Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« on: October 03, 2013, 10:27:56 pm »
I'd really like to see a major overhaul of the harpoon physics as I think the idea of the weapon is brilliant, but we can't put it to use properly due to the weird rubber strap behavior of the rope.
E.g. if you put a Harpoon at the front of the Pyra, hook an enemy and he flies away vertical to your direction, you'd expect to be pulled around by it so your ship faces the enemies tail. However the opposite is the case - you aren't able to steer anymore while your opponent can fly further away.
Here's a suggestion how to alter your Harpoon:
- As the movement of your ships feels quite realistic in general, I assume you've got physical models of your ships including masses, mass centers and moments of inertia. Use those to calculate realistic influences on hooked up ships!
- if a player hits with a harpoon let the length of the rope stay constant - no elastic yo-yo behaviour.
- if the distance of the ships reduced, simply let the rope sag and don't influence the movement of the ships at all. (some visual appearance of a sagging rope would be nice here...)
- if one of the ships tries to disengage this is prevented due to the rigid rope which can't be streched. Apply forces according to the ships relative movement at the two ends of the rope (weapon and the position where the hook hit the enemy ship) and calculate reacting forces and momentums influencing both ships movements. A simple elastic collision model might do the trick here.

optional:
- large rope forces could result in hull damage.
- allow friendly ships to be hooked. This would allow some advanced and fun tactics: E.g. pulling up allies whose balloon has been destroyed, dragging slower ships or stopping powder monkey captains to rush into the enemy trap ;)
- terrain hooks like mentioned here might be interesting as well - you want to turn around, but your steering is gone? - shot a harpoon into structure vertical to your movement direction and hurl around it.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2013, 10:32:40 pm by Wundsalz »

Offline Locutus of borg

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Re: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2013, 10:37:46 pm »
I really love this sugestion, the only problem I see is that you cant close distance using the harpoon with this tweek.  Maybe the rope could automatically shorten with time or something, cause that way you could you use it on a junker or something to help drag in speedy ships like squids

Offline D.R.R. Steamhand

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Re: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2013, 12:41:40 am »
I totally agree with the majority of this post except the harpooning allies thing.

It could easily lead to extreme griefing and there's also risk of people in a match becoming overbearing with their strategy and trying to pull their allies into their idea of a perfect spot when the ship their pulling might see the enemy and have a better idea or they might just wanna go of on their own and have fun with whatever happens

Offline Captain Smollett

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Re: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2013, 01:04:27 am »
- if a player hits with a harpoon let the length of the rope stay constant - no elastic yo-yo behaviour.
- if the distance of the ships reduced, simply let the rope sag and don't influence the movement of the ships at all. (some visual appearance of a sagging rope would be nice here...)

Great post but in case it gets lost in all the text, definitely these two points ^. 

Currently the harpoon is being looked into but it's very low on Muse's priority list (you know making of adventure mode and such) due to the amount of work necessary.  I do know that some things being considered are increasing the pull force of the harpoon and having the reeling in of the line be controlled by a gunner.

Offline Sprayer

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Re: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2013, 07:26:52 am »
[...]
- if the distance of the ships reduced, simply let the rope sag and don't influence the movement of the ships at all. (some visual appearance of a sagging rope would be nice here...)
[...]

I really love this sugestion, the only problem I see is that you cant close distance using the harpoon with this tweek.  Maybe the rope could automatically shorten with time or something, cause that way you could you use it on a junker or something to help drag in speedy ships like squids

Add a threshold for force that can be applied on the rope before it breaks too.
Automatically shorten the rope at all times with a rate that takes into account a few points:
-if the rope is sagged, the maximum force at which the rope can be pulled by the gun (should be a set ammount free of choice)
-if the rope is not sagged (don't know the right english word, sorry), take into account the force applied on the rope to decelerate the shortening. At half (or any other fraction, again free choice) the threshold of maximum force, the rope woudn't be shortened anymore.

Offline Wundsalz

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Re: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2013, 08:43:21 am »
I just realized that the code used for impacts might be reused here. I think elastic impacts similar to crashes would work just fine - the model has to work for pushes and pulls though.

Offline Arnox

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Re: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2013, 08:54:05 am »
I like your ideas Wund. +1. Would make the harpoon more popular and useful.

Offline Captain Smollett

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Re: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2013, 11:57:11 am »
Add a threshold for force that can be applied on the rope before it breaks too.

Believe it or not this actually already exists.  It doesn't happen much anymore with the current mechanics of the harpoon but it used to happen all the time pre 1.2 if you harpooned a ship travelling at full speed away from you while you were stationary.

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Re: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« Reply #8 on: October 04, 2013, 06:43:55 pm »
How about this: Left click fires, right click/hold reels in. Or instead of mouse wheel being 'ammo type', change to reel in, hold, slack, and release.

Offline Captain Smollett

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Re: Harpoon physics overhaul suggestion
« Reply #9 on: October 04, 2013, 09:37:06 pm »
How about this: Left click fires, right click/hold reels in. Or instead of mouse wheel being 'ammo type', change to reel in, hold, slack, and release.

Currently this is under heavy consideration by Muse, it's just a lot of coding and balancing work.

However Muse is very receptive to the player base, so if we all go into the dev matches this Tuesday and Thursday we might be able to gently encourage them to move it up the priority list.