rIpe - a Rope Physics Engine

May 1st, 2006, 04:19 Posted By: wraggster

HunterXI posted this news/release:

<blockquote>---- rIpe v0.5 - a Rope Physics Engine - by HunterXI ----

* What is rIpe?
rIpe is a Rope Physics Engine for the PSP, coded in LUA (meaning you'll need Lua Player - http://luaplayer.org/).

* What are Rope Physics?
Rope Physics are a study of physics in Videogames centering around the creation of ropes or strands, and how they can be drawn & animated realistically. The concept is to create a strand with a whole bunch of fixed segments, all of which are affected seperately by their environment, and by each other. The result, when done well, can be astoundingly realistic.

* Why "rIpe"?
I wanted to call the software something catchy and easy-to-remember; something namely, and so I initially called it "RiPE" (the "i" being lowercase because there is no word in "Rope Physics Engine" beginning with an "i"), but I didn't like the look of that, so I just switched the cases, giving "rIpe".

* What firmwares is it compatible with?
To my knowledge, any firmware that you can currently use Lua Player on. rIpe should be 2.0-2.6 compatible, but I don't know for sure, because I don't have a 2.0+ PSP.

* What features are implemented in this release?
In this release, I concentrated on simply getting out a stable release, moreso as a 'proof-of-concept' than a real build or release (not that I don't intend to continue work on it, however). For this reason, a few things are a little out-of-whack (for instance, at this point, this is more of an Elastics Engine) and the features are somewhat shallow; many you'd take for granted aren't here. For now, you can only play around with the engine in the configuration file. I fully intend to continue work on this, and you can expect more releases soon. Here's a list of exactly what you can play around with in the Scenario through the configuration file:
- Custom Anchors, Vertices, and Lines
- Gravity (this can be altered in-engine, as well)
- Line Elastic Strength
- Vertex Inertia
- Colors
- Backgrounds
- Visual size of Anchors & Vertices
- The presence of tips in the engine (this can also be changed in-engine, though)
- The presence of a few Extra Features

(Note: you'll need to know a little Lua to play with some of these features. If yoy need a refresher, I'd recommend the revamped version of Whitehawk's old Lua tutorials. You can find them here: http://www.scriptscribbler.com/psp/lua/lesson01.htm)

* What features aren't implemented in this release that will be?
There are a few things I wanted to implement but wasn't able to (but will soon). In no particular order:
- Support for multiple configuration files
- 'Truer' Rope Physics, to make this more of a ROPE Physics Engine and less of a Rubber Band Engine
- A Configuration file creator/editor
- Better customizability of the engine (like support for images for Vertices)
- A nicer, more streamlined, more user-friendly interface

* What if I have feedback/input/ideas?
Feel free to email me at (hunterxi [AT] gmail [DOT] com) with any thoughts, feedback, ideas, criticism, etc. you may have, just so long as it's CONSTRUCTIVE. If you're looking to complain, please do so to the nearest wall instead, because that's a rough equivalent of what complaining to me will get you, and it'll save me the trouble of deleting your email. Please type legibly (no 'IM speak' or shorthand), and preferably in English (though other languages are OK, too).</blockquote>

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