| My poor physics engine is crying out to me in pain. By popular demand, and against my paternal instincts, I am working options for controlling the physics into the game. Unfortunately, my physics engine isn't as good as I thought it was, so it breaks down sometimes when strange options are used. Beware of extreme options such as zero friction (which can slow down the animation), sticky bumpers (which can cause balls to "go through" the holes). Since I haven't had time to get to all the bugs, and I haven't fully updated the README, CHANGEs, and related files, but since I noticed that my hits were levelling off, I released 0.3 as a development release :)
There are a few other improvements (including new 3D balls provided by Bruce Smith, which are not in the screenshot) in 0.3, but the most important one is the configurable physics which really take the cake. There are so far 4 options:
| Option |
Meaning |
| Friction |
This is the amount subtracted from the ball's velocity at every iteration. The normal value is 0.06. |
| Bumper Drag |
This is the value by which the ball's velocity is multiplied every time it hits a bumper. The normal value is 0.8. A value of 1 means that the bumpers don't slow down the balls, 1.5 means that they speed them up, and 0 means that balls don't bounce off of them at all (sticky bumpers). |
| Collide Drag |
This is the value by which the velocity of each ball in a collision is multiplied. It is very similar to the bumper drag, but it isn't as much fun to play with. A value of 0 is pretty boring :) |
| Can hit moving balls |
This is particularly important in zero friction, as the game usually won't let you shoot a ball that is already in motion. It is currently slightly buggy. |
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