[mtuppurainen]

Sorry about the delay, I’ve only just returned from my vacation.

I remember overhearing a discussion about the early AB games in connection to this topic. As I’m not a programmer, I apologize for the shortcomings of the following explanation :)

This is how I remember it, hopefully it answers something:

The key word used in the debate was whether to make the physics “deterministic” or not. This could be achieved by altering the order the blocks were loaded in the LUA file. Keeping the loading order constant would produce the same result every time, whereas changing the order would cause more random results.

I have no idea if the AB games currently use deterministic system or not, but from the designer’s perspective using it would surely be preferable.

[mtuppurainen]

It’s been great to see the fans make the most out of the game. As I mentioned, we’ve been following Pigineering from day 1.

The decision behind having two kinds of (equally powered) soda bottles and rockets was based on giving more leeway for level design. It allowed for phasing the launches with the control buttons instead of having to click on the separate items in the vehicle itself.

The soda was introduced in the early stages as a weaker version of the rocket, one must learn to walk before running :)

[mtuppurainen]

Tesla bug was is of my personal favorites. We analyzed it and figured out what caused it, but also found out there was no easy fix around it (more PhysX goodness).

Road Hogs was a one off idea (actually inspired by the early sandbox racing videos on Pigineering ;) but it was deemed a bit far from the core game, this is why it hasn’t been tinkered with since.

It would also have been beneficial if I’d spotted this thread earlier, as the team has been reassigned for prototyping the next piggie titles :)

[mtuppurainen]

Unity is primarily made for 3D games and it uses PhysX engine as a default, whereas Angry Birds games have been made with house engine utilizing Box2D. (Unity is currently trying to cater more for 2D games, also implementing the Box2D. However, B2D is in many ways more limited that PhysX. Also most of the Angry Birds random destruction is caused by Box2D, some of the levels are pushing the boundaries of what it can handle).

Soon into development we found that PhysX is far from perfect, but the options were limited. As the game was made with a core team of 6, we didn’t discover most of the “unphysical” things until when they were posted on Pigineering and other sites. The team reacted to some of them (like providing a legitimate option to the boxing glove causing blocks to detach, which probably wasn’t PhysX related anyway), but mostly they just left them be.

Partly this is because compensating for PhysX’s imperfections would be a huge undertaking, partly because just of the fun factor! The team is just as entertained with the new finds as the rest of the Pigineering audience :)

[mtuppurainen]

I could give you a definitive answer (as I’m the lead designer of BP), but that would be too easy! Why not test first and I’ll confirm the results after :)