
An Examination of Physics in Video Games - atomlib
https://www.techspot.com/article/1960-video-game-physics/
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wruza
>If the physical forces are too lifelike, it can ruin the fun factor. For
example, imagine what it would be like to play Grand Theft Auto V with
unforgiving physics — there's a mod for that by the way.

There’s an entire game for that, GTA IV. Not sure if “fun” is a right term for
its plot, but that ruined nothing imo.

Apart from gta, I think physics and realism advancements look funny before the
fact that in most 3d games you still get stuck in floor irregularities while
running and die trying to get around that invisible wall. Or that you can wipe
an armored squad with a plasma weapon, but has to find a key to a wooden door.
Or that your superexoskeleton cannot do pull ups. Or that you shoot one of
guards and after a couple of minutes their buddies calm down and lose their
interest in the event. Like, you know, our guards die twice a day, not a big
deal.

I wish realism fixed _that_ instead of waving tents and accurate explosions.

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joppy
Needing to find the key to a flimsy office door while equipped with grenades
and a rocket launcher was always a pet peeve of mine when gaming :P

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KozmoNau7
Fallouts 1 and 2 let you force some doors open if you had high enough STR
and/or a crowbar. You could also blow them up with explosives.

In Wasteland 2, there's a specific Brute Force skill and you can attack pretty
my any object that you can interact with. If you have high strength and/or big
enough melee weapon (or dynamite), you can bypass most Brute Force checks (but
also make a _lot_ more noise in the process), and break down a lot of doors.

I agree that far too few games let you take a genuinely destructive approach,
except for specific scripted instances.

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beningrad
Successful implementations of game physics often has far less to do with
realistic simulation and far more to do with sensation. For anybody interested
in diving deep, pick up Game Feel by Steve Swink[0]

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Sensation-
Kaufman...](https://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Sensation-
Kaufmann/dp/0123743281)

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c3534l
With platformers, if you want satisfying physics, you have to turn up the
gravitational constant way up, increase the force of everything even more,
then add artificial hangtime to jumps. Which is nothing to say of being able
to change direction in midair with no external force acting on it.

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p1necone
Yup, platforming physics with a 5'10" character and accurate to real life
gravity feels _awful_.

Although perhaps that's because platformer characters behave more like small
jumping insects a few millimeters tall, and that's where we should go for
"realism" that still feels good.

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uoaei
Making video games with physical elements is about clever approximations and
gimmicks to make things seem physical, rather than simulating the physics
outright.

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andrepd
Exactly. It's a lesson that developers of Breath of the Wild taught us:
physics don't have to be _realistic_ , they have to be _a believable
approximation_. Same idea really as in most platformer games: you don't want
an accurate reproduction of a human jumper, you want a a believable
approximation such that it is joyful to just jump around.

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uoaei
I was originally only thinking about realism and believability on a
computational budget, but you're right, the aesthetic qualities of the physics
in a video game can be the difference between fun and soul-crushing.

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mntmoss
A pretty good example of where physics have gone in video games is in pinball,
pool and golf sims. The earliest of these generally had very simple ball
movement behaviors and the constraint solving, to the extent that it existed
as a concept, was designed to execute fast and model physics sometimes. And
this remained basically true through the 16-bit generations.

But by the mid-90's it was just starting to be possible to do it somewhat
right. There were a lot of pinball, pool, and golf games released in this time
frame, as well as some of the early physics puzzle games(namely The Incredible
Machine).

So by now you'd imagine it's close to perfect, right? Well, not really. Most
video pinball games still emphasize the "video" part of it. Bounces are muted,
the ball rolls a bit too smoothly, and the flipper angle dictates the shot
trajectory more than in reality. And the same is true with other genres: there
are plenty of things not modelled.

The best sim games are much better, but they still have their lingering
issues.

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mr_vile
I'm surprised the article didn't mention bunnyhopping or other kinds of
physics exploitation-based gameplay. It could also have talked about games
like Rocket League which rely on completely impossible physics to make a fun
game.

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test1235
why did bunny hopping exist?

as far as I remember, it was to do with jumping sideways being a lot faster
than other movement, but I can't imagine why you'd program that in?

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tinus_hn
The player can jump both forward and sideways with a maximum speed. If you do
that both at once the end result is you exceed to maximum speed diagonally.
Now if the player is on the ground he brakes to the maximum speed. So by
keeping contact with the ground as brief as possible you maintain more speed.

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dead_mall
>For example, imagine what it would be like to play Grand Theft Auto V with
unforgiving physics — there's a mod for that by the way.

A mod? GTA IV! The article should of showed a gameplay clip of gta 4's racing
and especially the car damage physics. It's far more complex than what gta 5
offered. I was hoping to see a gta 4 mention lol

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mhh__
The tyre model in Rfactor 2 is something to behold, relatively cutting edge
let alone for a video game.

