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FLAMING FRAGMENTS

ROLE

Programmer, gameplay designer, audio designer, most artwork

VIDEO

PLAY

In this project, I undertook the challenge of creating machines with separately destructible parts; even with parts destroyed, other parts could generally continue to function. It's mostly feature-complete and has served well as a tech demo for exploring multi-component machines with individual destruction.

A personal highlight was creating a multi-legged walking machine, which had a completely physics-driven mechanical system to achieve walking locomotion. The system also could be partially (or fully) destroyed, with physics simulating the result.

🎞️ Mechanical walking system

I love mechanical stuff! I built the walker unit to function fully with physics for locomotion - no animations on it. Rotational movement, powered by physics, drives the legs into a forward motion. Feet on the legs grip the ground and propel the machine left or right. The machine's walking systems can be partially destroyed, resulting in physics-driven behavior as leg segments flop around.

2D screenshot of a number of vehicles on screen along with a character that looks darkened and is at an odd angle; some vehicles are destroyed, and debris is on the ground. Vehicles include flying ones with hover jets and spikes, car-like ones with turrets, and a large 6-legged walking machine shooting a laser and multiple saws. A purple power-up circle is also on screen.

Pushing objects around

At first, player velocity was directly being changed each physics update, as opposed to adding force, which didn't feel as good for movement. However, that caused the player to push heavy machines around as though they were made of cardboard.

I resolved this with a hybrid solution. When the player isn't touching certain objects, the player movement uses that old system. But if the player is very near certain physics objects, then movement is applied by adding force.

2D screenshot of a character and a car-shaped vehicle with a turret. The car-shaped vehicle has lost its wheel, with the wheel flying off.

Separately destructible parts

The problem I wanted to tackle with this project was that in most games, enemy entities are destroyed in an all-or-nothing fashion. Here, each component of a machine is connected via physics joints, has its own health, and can be destroyed separately. The scripting brain for each machine is attached to the most core object.

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