I was really hoping nobody would pick me up on that. But to be fair, as far as Portal is concerned, if you drop something it will fall to the ground. Even if you fly down through a portal to fire yourself in to the air, you will still fall to the ground eventually. But yeah, I deserve those slaps. Especially since I was going to go on to suggesting studying artificial gravity (through rotation, like Halo) in the games but decided not to because artificial gravity machines are used on all the ships any way. In my books, artifical gravity machines (machines which act like magnets but for all objects) is on the same page as "Then he woke up and it was all a dream". I hate that page. Its also one of the reasons for why I'm not too fond of the Ark's design. First of all, where does the gravity come from? Halo's gravity was 'natural', although artificial, spin an enormous ring at the right speed and everything on the inside sticks to the edges. The Ark can't do this which leaves a few alternatives: Constant Acceleration and/or deceleration, this is very unlikely because it would either mean the Ark was orbiting the galaxy at greater and greater speeds to maintain the 1G or it needs to turn around to decelerate. Or the material the Ark is made from is really, really dense, so only a thin layer (in comparison to the thickness of the Earth) is required for 1G But none of that really helps you with your Physics project!
please don't bump its rude.... but onto your idea... first of all Halo 3, although its physics engine is quite good, is not the first thing that comes to mind when the words physics and game are used in a sentence... usually people think about Half Life, Half Life 2, or basically another game by Valve... (with the source engine) so in my opinion not the best choice as to WHICH game... On the other hand thats a very interesting aproach.... you should really look into wether or not you can do it with Half Life instead...
For the surfaces thing, water does slow vehicles. I saw it in the Army Tournament video guide a couple months back. The same might apply with sand or snow.
Everything in halo is realitive. You need to decide what is 1kg and work your way from there. The only 2 know messurement are that masterchief weighs 10 tons (or 20) and is 10 feet tall. The phisics are relitivly simmilar to our own word. The catapult is a lever where the drop pods hit one end and the fulcrum is right next to them giving it a little bit of lift. The exception is a gravity lift and 2 drop pods in an elephant and make it fly. and friction is not that well done.
you forgot one major thing, sound: in physics, there is not only weight or velocity or friction, mass, density, gravity and others, but sound. heres a clue, shoot a rocket, then go into theater, go far away and listen to the difference. (answer: does it take just a tiny bit longer to reach you? what about the frequency of the noise/pitch?) listen to the difference between when its coming toward you than when its going away from you. (objects moving towards you begin to have a higher and higher pitch and amplitude/volume and as it goes past it goes lower and lower)
Its not hard to learn Garry's Mod at all, especially if you've got 3/4 weeks of learning time. Depends what you're trying to do though, I'd say you're better off learning things with Garry's Mod than Forge, considering you can say "Garry's Mod accurately follows the laws of physics.." etc etc.
i think that sand makes warthogs slide and posibly so does snow. i also noticed that when you shoot a missile at the water (goto the deeper parts of the ocean on valhala or last resort or even high ground) it seems to act like a torpeedo for a short distance, i made a battle ship game using this concept, so it's not all in my head,lol.
If you want an accurate physics system in a video game, I would recommend Half-Life 2. Besides several 'normal' (a crossbow, fitted with a sniper scope, that shoots red hot rods of iron can hardly be called normal), it also has a gravity gun, a device which lets you pull objects towards you and propel them at your enemies. In Half-Life 2, there are many physics based puzzles, which involve using weight, floating capacity and friction of several objects. Besides, it's very cheap now. And it's kick-ass.
unfortunately, bungie included 'snow tires' on all the vehicles at avalanche, so that may counteract the snow-makes-stuff-slide theory. they may have coded in the slip, and then coded in an anti-slip, but they propably didn't bother, with the explanation of snow tires. the properties are propably the same as anywhere else, save for in water.
Fix'd Anywho, Halo 3 may have a very realistic engine, but it is far from realistic. There is no wind resistance as far as I can tell and there is no weight/mass differential when it comes to falling. As for friction, that is highly irrational, as it would be hard to calculate reasonable friction into a game. Another irrational thing is when you shoot a rocket through a mancannon. Have you ever done that? No? Well, you can't. That's irrational IMO. Momentum does exist, but only slightly. Have you ever gone through a mancannon, then halfway gone to forge, moved, and went back human. Did you keep moving after going human? I believe that is partially momentum. Also, go to a tall map, fall, go to monitor before hitting the ground, fly back up and repeat. You will likely begin to fall at a faster pace until your Spartan or Elite hits terminal velocity It's a good science project, but I think that it will be harder than Cheifs original plan to get r3c0nz, because of the fact that it's a video game. I don't think that Bungie intended on having their pride and joy turned into a High(?) School science project, so they didn't take so much of this into consideration Thank you for reading, and I hope this somewhat helps!
Oh yeah, I made a thread about that. I never took those measurements... But it is true. Drop a prowler through the skybubble in forge. It makes a large bang when it blows up, but the sound takes longer to reach you.
That's funny. When I look down at vehicles get destroyed on sandbox, I see it about a half second before I hear it. It's pretty neat that Bungie incorporated that into halo.