
Simulating squishy pixel-art spaceships on the GPU - mkeeter
http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/pixelsim/
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glxybstr
neat effect i suppose, but i can't imagine it looking very good in-game.
doesnt this go against the whole style of pixel art, being aligned to a grid,
low palette colors and keeping the same pixel resolution throughout? i see way
too many things that change pixel sizes even through the same sprite. i think
this would be better suited to larger svg or even pre-rendered images.

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anigbrowl
I had the same thought. If it's meant to look cartoony it might be better to
just deform a simple box/balloon and map that to the sprite. This is worthy
work, I just think it's a little _too_ realistic for the whimsical context and
ends up failing to satisfy either criterion.

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fit2rule
I wonder if perhaps you're not overlooking the trees for the forest here -
maybe this effect doesn't apply too well to an 8-bit shooter ship, but there
are certainly ways this effect can be utilized in other interesting
8-bit/pixel-style forms. Just adding structural deformation to a platformer,
for example, opens up all sorts of interesting new dimensions - between the
blocks. Sort of like Gish, I would suppose, and games like it ..

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Qantourisc
I'm not sure I'd like it, I would be compensating for the shift in mass. (What
is on screen is not what is being simulated, or are the distorted pixels also
used in the physics calculations ?) Other then that I can see it working very
well in games with "jelly" art style.

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gcb0
this is awesome on so many levels. but a spaceship is the worst example! :)
something organic would awe much more... well it does have more organic
examples at the end.

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fit2rule
I've been trying to think how I would apply this deformation to a shooter-
style game (I agree its a poor example perhaps) and I think it would be quite
relevant as an effect to be applied during acceleration/travelling .. and
also, one place it would be interesting as an effect would of course be:
Asteroid Fields. I imagine an implementation of Asteroids which utilizes this
effect for full mining-ship-plundering-the-billions-of-bits style gameplay.
Imagine your little ship has to dig through every Asteroid to get the other
little, squishy bits, buried there-in ..

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gcb0
when i saw the spaceship i assumed you were going to use if for a 'entering
light speed' kinda of animation

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10098
That spaceship looks... suggestive. Nevertheless, this is a really interesting
hack, good work!

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malkia
This might be useful in minecraft itself - to enhance a bit the animation.

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DanAndersen
Very neat! Any ideas if this would run without much trouble in WebGL?

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brittonrt
If it's running in a shader, which it is, it should work just fine via GLSL
and WebGL

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Umn55
This could be used to make an art tool.

