Gravity Well (January 11th, 2010)

Here's an idea I've had for a long time. I wanted to make a model of the solar system, but have all the different planets exert gravity on the tanks. So if you swung too close to Jupiter, you'd get sucked into it and killed. But then Mercury's gravity wouldn't be nearly as strong as Jupiter's, so you wouldn't have to worry too much about it.

Gravity Well

BZFlag really has no way to apply gravity to objects, so I decided I needed a lot of individual mesh faces with different physics drivers. Then after thinking about it a little harder, I realized it would take a ton of work to make "gravity" for each planet, so I decided to just do the sun. I used 24 different physics drivers to force tanks to the center of the map. Out near the edge of the map the effect was barely noticeable, but if you get too close to the sun, escape is nearly impossible. I really need more physics to give a better "resolution" so tanks will have a smoother trajectory.

Gravity Well in Wings3d