Steve's Blog

Feb. 28th, 2018 Research for DIGM 540 Predictive Physics Simulation in Game Mechanics by: Perttu Hämäläinen, Xiaoxiao Ma, Jari Takatalo, Julian Togelius Interactive Control For Physically-Based Animation by: Joseph Laszlo, Michiel van de Panne, and Eugene Fiume Other Interesting Topics Encountered The lack of research in soft bodies (as opposed to rigid bodies) in the physics engines of games. Covered in: Unifying Rigid and Soft Bodies Representation: The Sulfur Physics Engine by DarioMaggiorini, Laura Anna Ripamonti, and Federico Sauro

Feb. 27th, 2018 Scripting Enemies to Check Distance for Ranged Attacks - Unity Scripting is Fun - Unity 2D Game Basics - Enemy AI - Ranged Attack - Youtube Video This video shows the basic setup for allowing an enemy in a 2D game to rotate, locate player with raycasting and distance tracking, and fire projectiles in the proper direction. Unity Manuals - Layers This is placed here for the use of layer masks to control raycasts. Layer masks allow the user to either ignore specific layers with their raycasts, or specifically target layers. This was searched because I had an issue where raycasts where colliding with the object itself and/or the parent object, both of which have colliders.

Feb.26th, 2018 Outline for Project for DIGM 540 UPDATED: Link to Google Doc of Outline

Feb. 25th, 2018 More Gear Calculations for Real World Physics Example Gear Train System Equation Use Many gear train system types setup with different uses of general gear equations and parameters to show different uses. Basic Gear Definitions Has some general gear terminology and shows/describes them in a very basic and easy to understand manner.

Feb, 25th, 2018 DIGM 540 Project - Resources Basic Mesh Scripting Tool Description for Unity Creating Basic Billboard Mesh Through Unity Scripting Shows how to create a vertex array, set these into triangles, and create a full mesh. More Help for Procedural Generation of Mesh This shows that it is possible to create/modify meshes within Unity using scripting. Project Direction - Create Script in Unity that Will Take User Inputs to Instantiate a Gear Model Based on Said Parameters This may be possible through the general use of the Mesh class in Unity scripting. Something along the lines of creating a set of vertices for the central body (some smoothness level of cylinder), then creating a gear tooth mesh that can be multiplied and geometrically positioned around the central core body mesh created. Bump Mapping Normal Maps from Unity "Normal Maps and Height Maps are both types of Bump Map. They both contain data for representing apparent detail on the surface of simple

Resources for Setting Up a Unity Project in GitHub How to Commit Changes for Unity Project with Github Desktop - Youtube Video

Unity - Making 2D Sprite Flash Upon Taking Damage Make A Sprite Flash? - From Unity From gilad905 in this post: Create an animation controller state machine and an animation clip for the flashing state, just like creating a normal animation state. If you want to mix the flashing with another animation (e.g flash while walking), create a new animation layer in the animator and do all below in the new layer. In the new layer's configuration, make sure it's set to Blending: Additive (so it won't override the base layer) and that its weight is set to 1. Enter the animation view (Window -> Animation), chose the wanted GameObject and the empty animation clip you just created. If any properties are already attached to the clip, remove them. Click 'Add Property' -> Sprite Renderer -> Enabled -> the '+' icon near it. Using this, you make the object flash by turning SpriteRenderer.Enabled on and off. But for a different effect than flashing, you can

Feb. 19th, 2018 Creating a Basic Cam Model - Maya Using Maya, I was able to create a very basic cam mechanism using a basic cylinder as the main body, and moving a few of the edges symmetrically to create a more interesting shape for the follower to follow as it rotated. Colliders for Cam in Unity Placing Colliders Use Capsule Collider for main body of Cam (turned sideways, the body of the capsule collider works well as a cylinder collider) This capsule collider has its radius set to that of the Cam main body, and its height can be adjusted to fit the thickness Create gameObject - cube Remove components: Mesh Renderer and Mesh Filter (leaves cube's collider: this collider has more flexibility for more complex designs) Set this as a child of the original game object of choice (the gear model in our case) This was rotated at a 45 degree angle and moved to fit the sharp tear-shaped location of the Cam Setting Up Cam-Follower System Cam Constraints: Frezze Position - x

Feb. 19th, 2018 Research - Learning Physics Modeling with PhysX - Book This is a book by Krishna Kumar going over the basics of PhysX as a physics engine. Could be useful for better understanding the default physics engine, PhysX, to properly drive engineering mechanisms. Research - Book - Engineering Finite Element Analysis "Finite element analysis is a basic foundational topic that all engineering majors need to understand in order for them to be productive engineering analysts for a variety of industries. This book provides an introductory treatment of finite element analysis with an overview of the various fundamental concepts and applications. It introduces the basic concepts of the finite element method and examples of analysis using systematic methodologies based on ANSYS software." This could be useful for learning and using finite element analysis, if looking into real time finite element analysis for use in games. List of Physics Engines Wikipedia page for Ph

Feb. 18th, 2018 Creating Multiple Copies of Models with Different Parameters - Maya As was mentioned in the last post, it seems that it was effective to save an original copy of models of mechanisms in Maya with the past transforms and history in tact to edit to create modified versions of said object. Using this, I was able to create another gear that simply had double the radius of the original, and export that model to Unity as a separate object. Colliders for Gears in Unity Placing Colliders Create gameObject - cube Remove components: Mesh Renderer and Mesh Filter (leaves cube's collider: this collider has more flexibility for more complex designs) Set this as a child of the original game object of choice (the gear model in our case) Need to position with local x and z position relative to parent, as well as correct rotation, to fit collider to single gear tooth Determine angle value (&Theta) between centers of teeth (use 360deg / # of teeth) Use x = Rcos(&Th

Feb. 15th, 2018 Import/Export Between Maya and Unity - Scaling Maya to Unity Scale Guide The scaling between Maya and Unity can act a bit strangely. It appears to be because Unity treats its units as "meters" by default, and Maya treats its units in "centimeters" by default. This guide helps in figuring out how to set up your Maya work file and its export, along with the Unity import, so that the scaling of objects makes sense. Directly from the guide: "The best reason I can figure from all the posts on the web is that Maya’s native units are centimeters and that is how it “thinks” about its scenes. Anything exporting FROM Maya will essentially be in centimeters, so even though we set the scale of our objects to Meters, they are actually still in centimeters. The FBX, however, doesn’t really care about scale. It will, however, pull the relative scale value out based on what you are trying to export it as. In this case, we have a centimeter based file and we

Feb. 15th, 2018 Gear Equations Basic Gear Equations The basics of gear ratios. Gear Parameters Gear Parameters This site includes a list of many parameters involved in gear design, and some of the general equations to obtain them. Types of Gears Types of Gears This site shows all of the different types of gears and gear mechanisms in a very basic fashion with short descriptions of the general uses for each of them.

Presentation Sources, Jan 5, 2018 Engineering Mechanisms as Game Elements Mechanisms (Engineering) - Wikipedia "A mechanism, in engineering, is a device that transforms input forces and movement into a desired set of output forces and movement." Examples of Mechanisms: Gears and Gear Trains Belt and Chain Drives Cam and Followers Linkages Friction Devices Example Games Dealing with Engineering Mechanisms Gears - FantasticChoice - Flash Game This game has one intitial gear powered by a robot, and the player must place gears to fi

Presentation Sources, Jan 4, 2018 Example Games Dealing with General Relativity Velocity Raptor - Online Flash Game This is a game by TestTubeGames that covers some general consequences of general relativity, such as length contraction, time dilation, and the light doppler effect. A Slower Speed of Light - Video Trailer This is a game developed by the MIT Game Lab where the collectibles lower the speed of light, which allows the player's normal speed to come close to the "universal speed limit", creating more observable consequences of general relativity. This is open source, and works with Unity, so they allow anyone to access the coding behind it to use it as a sort of engine for a game. Example games Dealing with Conservation of Energy and Temperature

Presentation Sources, Jan 3, 2019 Example Games Dealing with Light Lazors - Mobile Game Refraction - Mobile Game Tilted - Mobile Game Legends of Learning - Games on Transmission and Refraction of Light Legends of Learning is a site that has many educational based games that are small and simple, normally covering one or two main subjects at a time. PhET Lens Simulation PhET is a non-profit open education resource project centralized in University of Colorado Boulder, and founded by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman.