collision and messages
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I'm trying to keep my collision system agnostic to the objects. The collision system gets enough input to determine a collision and then sends a collision message to the two objects involved with the collision info so that they can respond.
My problem is that the objects respond differently based on the object collided with. For example, if the player hits a wall, he will just stop/slide, but if a rocket hits the player, he needs to take damage and get pushed back.
I'm trying to figure out how to handle this nicely. A simple way would be to flag objects as damaging causing on collision:
if( object.isDamageCausing() )
take damage/push back
else // just stop or try to slide around object
stop/slide
Any other ideas?
Use a "physical world", it need not be especially accurate but will control objects, apply forces, stop them etc. according to set rules. This is done in the "collision-engine". Then you send messages to both objects where you perhaps also include a pointer of the other object. Each object will response to the collision (sounds, visuals etc) but will not need to bother about their posision since this has allready been handled by the world physics (they would also be able to apply additional forces on the colliding object depending on their nature). Don't know if this is the best of ways but I've used this in a shootemup and it works well.
The way you have described is sound and generally how it is done in the many various collision engines. I would reconsider what you report something a little more generic than damage causing is likely to be more suitable. Another common report is the collision material. With this you could then query against materials
void Object::CollisionMessage(CMessage* pMessage){ // I collided with pMessage->pOther switch (pMessage->materialID) { case MATERIAL_DAMAGE: TakeDamagePushBack(); break; default: WhateverElse(); }}This topic is closed to new replies.
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