Game Development Community

Player object commands/behaviour.

by Sylvain · in Technical Issues · 08/10/2007 (7:43 am) · 2 replies

Hi there !
I am currently working on programming a serious game : a surgical simulator. It is supposed to simulate a minimally-invasive laparoscopic operation. i.e. the tools and the camera are handled by the surgeon through 4 small incisions.
Here is my issue : I would like to modify the player's commands (the 'player object' is actually one of the surgical tool : scissors, grasper ...) in a way that mimics the reality.

What I would need is first having my player object rotating on a sphere around the incision's location and then eventually being able to increase/decrease the sphere's radius as well.

I don't know if I'm really clear ?

Here is a diagram that summarizes everything :

http://bp0.blogger.com/_QbrXCxrUamw/RruLwpwty8I/AAAAAAAAAMU/IXnU-N9Rkdk/s1600-h/schema.JPG

In fact, I managed to have my camera behaving this way by using the 'orbit mode' and setting the orbit distance to a negative value.

How difficult do yo think it might be to modify the player's commands ?
I guess it wil involve modify some c++ files, or would it be possible to do only using scripts ?

Sylvain

#1
08/10/2007 (9:57 pm)
You just asking how to make the sphere the camera is roating on to increase? If so I would have to actually sit down to try to do it to be able to tell you how, although where I would start is in the start.fps there is a chatHud guid that when you click "p" it increases in size and back down you could use the same technique to do what your wanting(if I understand you correctly)

Hope I'm a little help :)

Austin
#2
09/14/2007 (8:51 am)
Thanks for answering Austin, i was relying on automatic notification, but i forgot to check the box !! that's why i'm a bit late !

Latest developments :

Camera is working fine using orbit mode and negative orbit distance.

I just figured today that it might be a good idea to use a FlyingVehicle object instead of a player object : I created an instance of a flying vehicle, set its masscenter to "0 -10 0" which results in making te vehicle rotate around an exterior point when using the mouse (i.e. modifying pitch and yaw).

Now i need to figure how to prevent the vehicle from returning to its original position once i drop the commands !

If it takes me too much time i'll probably post another thread since the name of this thread hasn't much to do with FlyingVehicle Physics !

But still, if someone here can give me tips on how to modify the behaviour of my vehicle, it would be just great !