Physics are fun! Also Ludum Dare 45

Hello everyone, I hope you're having a fun Halloween time! I've spent most of the last few weeks working on costumes for the family, but I've also managed to squeeze in some programming, and even another fun project that my wife suggested and is co-producing!

Early this month was Ludum Dare 45! I thoroughly enjoy attempting this jam and I was looking forward to giving it another run. The theme was "Start with nothing" and I set a restriction to NOT make another 2d sidescroller action game. Instead I started with the idea "Open a shop in a back alley as a homeless person." I do wish to take a moment and say I recognize the sensitivity of this topic. Many cities in the US are facing a major problem with homelessness, and I strongly feel the position of many citizens and governments are actively making the situation worse. This helped shape the tone of my game to focus on the desperation of such a situation.


Every morning random garbage spawns in 2 back alleys. You must collect this garbage and attempt to talk to people to find anyone willing to give you money in exchange for this garbage. "One man's garbage is another mans treasure." If you are unable to raise $10 by nightfall you will not have enough money for food and water, and will not survive the night. To make things even harder every item is made up of a grid which takes up space in your inventory. Your inventory is pathetically small at 2x5, with items being 1x1, 1x2, 2x1 or 2x2 in size.

Just because you manage to fit an item in your jacket doesn't mean you'll be able to sell it. People are not willing to stop and chat with a homeless person and will largely ignore you. If you don't have exactly what someone wants, when they want it they'll continue on their way and get the item from somewhere else.

This game took me right up to the deadline to finish and is missing many features I had hoped to implement. That said if you are interested I have posted a playable version to Itch and the source code is available on Github.

I've been really focused on working through physics and collisions for Project Bogie. I know I want rather large environments and a system that integrates well with my entity-data structure, so I figured I could tackle most of the collisions from scratch. This is working pretty much as well as I had hoped, with some parts going very smoothly and others being kind of a pain, but progress is being made every week and I can't complain about that!

The flight physics I want to try are loosely based off real aerodynamic lift models. I am boiling the flight dynamics I wish to see in each aircraft into as few tables as possible. I am not trying to make a simulator so everything is being focused on feel.

I should note that I do not plan on including any real world vehicles. Everything will be fictional and slightly futuristic. I find the aesthetic for Crimson Skies very appealing.

Collisions are causing a bit of a headache. Object to object collisions were surprisingly straight forward to implement and I am very happy with the results. Terrain is currently problematic and I have gone through several iterations to find what works the best. I do not need incredibly accurate terrain collisions to get a functional prototype working, I do need one that works consistently. This is likely going to be my focus for the next week or so.

Until next time!