Thx for your ideas Slacer.
It sounds like a really good way to give the player a rough idea where the object is going to go. And this might be the way it's done in many games now that I think about it.
It's often not very accurate though.
Now my game mechanic is based on the players ability to make objects hit in midair and then bounce off the way he intends to.
Kind of like orchestrating a physics event beforehand and when everything is set and ready, it plays out just like the player intended.
For that he's able to stop time, move back and forward in time, move around in space to observe and organize collisions,. He can can then go back to where the path originates and change the variables there, resulting in a different outcome.
or if this would kill the fun part of your game if the player knows the result before the event happens
I thought that too when I watched different physics game. Knowing that you are going to hit the target perfectly and then seeing it happening is not much fun. But if you could construct a very complex and very fast event that you could not create in real time, then I think it would be a nice moment when you see your creation play out.
Kind of like that Ati Demo from a few years back, where hundreds of balls fly all around the scene and hit different instruments and you totally lose track of whats happening. But it looks amazing.
Now Calculating a simple path with simple math as you described sounds nice but would be way to complicated and I'm not sure if the engine would calculate exactly the same or be less (or more) accurate.
Is it possible to speed up time in general? So the physics could play out and I could record the paths and then move frame by frame, back and forward?
