Ragdoll Physics Using Verlet
As I’m sure you didn’t know, I’m making a game based on my death. It is called Mike’s Funeral. One of the major aspects of Mike’s Funeral will be the flying corpse and his ragdoll properties. I have to admit, nothing makes me chuckle like a body flying through the air.
But just how does one create such an object? How do you create this kind of gameplay?
It’s true I could have used a pre-built physics engine like
Box2D. However, with only one ragdoll in the game and no need for friction or density or any other advanced concepts, I felt compelled to do it on my own.
Fortunately it isn’t too difficult! If you’re interested in learning the basics of some simple ragdoll physics, you should read on. All code samples are in C/C++ and there is a source download at the end of the article.
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allegro, c++, opengl, physics, ragdoll, tutorial, verlet
Five Stone Post-Mortem: AI
About a year ago, I decided to get back into game programming. I was eager for my first taste of AllegroGL and wanted to keep it nice and easy.
I pulled out an old game I had made years ago and decided to rework it from scratch. It took me a few weeks of head-to-desk pounding, but I finally updated my old game for a new decade. All those
Allegro docs, the OpenMPT
tutorial, and
NeHe came through for me. Finally I had my remake of Five Stone Chess!
I sat back and marveled at my genius (a feeling that usually wears off after I pull a ‘push’ door.) It didn’t take long to realize that the game was pretty boring. I mean, it’s just a dumb five-in-a-row game. I seized the opportunity to breathe a little life into the idea.
It was time to add a CPU player named Compy. I hadn’t done any proper AI since my third year so I was worried I would fail to make a compelling opponent.
In the end, it turned out all right. I’m sure she could still be smarter, but I can barely beat her now as it is. I’ll talk about the process of her emerging AI in this post.
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ai, five stone
Okay, the theme is mostly set in place. It might blow over in a stiff breeze, but I’ll fix it in the coming weeks. The Games page is put together… now I just gotta actually post these tutorials. See you tomorrow for that.
