A challenge for those who will accept it AKA the blob!

Yes, the blob. Listen to this while reading this post:

Listening to it? Good.

Ok, so I have been interested in box2d for a while, but have wondered about one thing... Softbodys!

I am not saying I can think of any practical use for them in a game other than just looking neat (Or making a gish clone), but it wouldn't hurt to try. I suppose a false softbody could be created by making thousands of tiny rigid bodies stuck together... I am not sure, but do you think it is possible? Give it a shot, do it or the blob will get you

Have fun!

--Nic

You mean like this?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/529356/blob.exe

I made it ages ago. It's kind of fragile if you mess with it with the mouse, but it's pretty stable as long as it's just interacting with the environment.

very possible, and theres even a variety of ways to do it, you can use springs (which kinda freaks out)

or you can make a closed loop of hinged objects and add force in the opposite direction than that of " the object to the average of all the 'loops' objects." (quotations because its kinda confusing)

for a bouncy ball type blob this method works really well, and if you don't crush it beyond its center (which shouldn't be happening anyways) like with spring objects, it can crimp or invert.

for meat cube type of things, springs are really the way to go.

very possible, and theres even a variety of ways to do it, you can use springs (which kinda freaks out)

or you can make a closed loop of hinged objects

I do both in my example. The rings of objects are all hinged together, and the light green crossbars all show where the spring force is being applied. It took me a loooong time to figure out the recipe for that blob. It's a very delicate balancing act, every blob I made before that one blew up catastrophically. Like, literally... they would go into a death wobble and then explode.

You mean like this?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/529356/blob.exe

I made it ages ago. It's kind of fragile if you mess with it with the mouse, but it's pretty stable as long as it's just interacting with the environment.

I tried to move my blob and it died

How did it die?

The centre dot went outside the ring, which made the whole thing go a bit crazy. I had to put it down.

Hmm... strange. This just happened from moving the arrow keys? I can run the thing back and forth through the level and smash it into walls and stairs as hard as it will go and it still maintains it's shape. It generally only breaks if I torture it with the mouse.

Physics sucks

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/666516/cmblob.cap

Ah, yes, I was torturing it quite a bit.

Edit: I've been trying to think of a way of doing a blob system like that, but making its area constant to make it more physically accurate. Any ideas?

Edit: I've been trying to think of a way of doing a blob system like that, but making its area constant to make it more physically accurate. Any ideas?

As in making it's skin is stretchy so it bulges out one end when you squeeze the other? Hmm... not sure about that. It would be pretty complicated, I imagine, and the event sheet for this thing is pretty complicated as it is.

Physics sucks

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/666516/cmblob.cap

Yes, but softbodies using physics is the topic at hand.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1010927/furry%2 ... 0thing.cap

yay for no springs attached (it wont work in newer versions so open it in 98.9 or else it just asplodes, hingeing doesnt seem to work the same in new vers)

dl.dropbox.com/u/1010927/furry%20blood%20thing.cap

yay for no springs attached (it wont work in newer versions so open it in 98.9 or else it just asplodes, hingeing doesnt seem to work the same in new vers)

Actually, it works just fine in 0.99.82

You just need to click on each physics object in the object bar to populate the new property values that were added in recent builds. Anyway, your furry blood blob looks pretty neat

its really nice and also really gross. I managed to squeeze some blood out of it, which makes it more gross.

QuaZi

It is kind of quivery though, like it's vibrating. Even if you take out he blood and the random() part of the force action it still looks like it's scared for it's life . My spring method might be cumbersome, but it does make for a more wibbly wobbly blob rather than a shaky quaky blob.

Yours is much simpler to construct, though.