Yesterday, we pitched our topics for our physics final project. We must select a topic in the world of Game Physics to expand on- working in groups to create a demo and give a presentation on the research we have done. I think the most intimidating part of this project is trying to select something from the vast genera of game physics.
My group has decided to create a small solar system simulator- creating a central gravitational unit for the other planets to orbit. Our plan is to use the gravity and mass of each planet as the dominant factors controlling the physics forces.
I personally would like to create asteroids that come in and knock the planets off of their orbit- just to see what happens. Will the planet start going crazy and fly off, will it eventually return to a normal orbit, will it knock it off the screen, will it change the orbit length/speed/etc... I don't know, and I think it would be cool to find out if we get time.
We plan to use Unity as our engine. It has been interesting to work with Unity and bypass the physics, creating it all by ourselves and avoiding the rigidbody and colliders. I hope we can bring it all together to make something really neat in this final project.
My group is myself and 2 other programmers that I have worked with before: Felix and Charlie. They are both extremely talented and I think we can get all of this together and make something really cool. It'll be fun with the 3 of us. Since Charlie and I have pretty similar coding styles, I think it'll be great to learn more from Felix about his style and how to work with both of them together. I'm excited to develop a project that is original as well- as in we are not replicating something from the professor.
Overall, I feel pretty excited and optimistic. We have some check-ins through the next few weeks and it'll be cool to see the progress at each. Next week is thanksgiving break, so it'll be nice to jump in after some time to recharge.