Simulated physics

Mekside behaves as real as we can make it, and we’re still tweaking a lot.

As with the active Sensors and Motors, it will be part of the game to learn about how the different passive block behaves and the depths of the simulation we achieve, but we are naming a few physical phenomenas as a start here below.

Collisions

As a cornerstone we simulate collisions between everything in the game, no matter if it’s static terrain geometry or completely free block objects, players or chickens. There are some unimplemented things in the game currently related to this and one obvious omission is that the player’s weight is not counted when standing on objects.

Friction

There is friction between all blocks, and this is material dependent but in the current game release this is rather non-optimized. In fact, friction is probably too large to be realistic between most materials so you can expect some reductions here.

Aerodynamics

There are blocks in the game that can act like wings, in that they give a lift force depending on the relative air-speed. Since there are no actual simulated winds in Mekside (yet), this simply means the speed of the block currently. The wings are usually symmetric in a forward/backward manner, so it does not matter in which way the wind blows over them. They are orientable blocks though and the lift will be produced upwards relative the block.

Buoyancy

All blocks in the game generally are buoyant, that is, they get an upward force on them when immersed in water. This force is enough to keep them afloat in some cases, depending on the material’s weight, and enables real boats to be built.

Destruction and breakage

We have a lot of work done with the all-important part of breaking of structures which is not yet enabled in the game since it hasn’t really been tested yet, and can break the gameplay severely if not properly tweaked. You don’t want your finely crafted vehicles to fall apart the second you start the engines. But eventually, this part of the game will be enabled and it will be an integral part of the gameplay to learn about how different block materials behave under different kind of pressures and collision forces and how to build anything in a stable way.


Credits

This is the place to give credit to Erwin Coumans and his Bullet 3D physics library which Mekside’s physics system is based on!