Photo: Breno Neves/ GT Comunicação do fisl14

Matheus de Lima Pereira

In the first evening of fisl14 (jul/03) we had the speech of Adriano Melo, developer of the game The Incredible Circus, about physics engines and renderization in games through simulation of physical systems such as rigid bodies dynamics, soft bodies dynamics and fluids, at 05:00PM, room 41B, titled “Desmontando uma engine de física” (Disassembling a phsycs engine). The abstract says "physics engines are used to create games such as Angry Birds, CounterStrike, Team Fortress and Bad Piggies.
In this speech we'll analyze some of the parts that build up to an engine and help developers and gamers to better understand how physics simulation are carried on in a game".

Initially, Adriano focused on the engines, explaining theoretical physical aspects (kinematics and solids mechanics), and also explained the interface engine/renderization (how the varying speeds in fps work and the process initialization-updating in loop with drawing - finish) and how renderization operates under the physics engines and the differents ways the process can take.

After explaining the methods used for trajectories, explained about strategies for detection of collision, through various techniques, based in:

a) formulation of rules of restriciton to distance between points, and angles in faces, composing a certain object which, after renderization, takes the shape of a certain element of the game (the player, for instance), which keeps the whole strucutre in place;

b) calculation of the position of bodies kept by rules of restriction (above), as well as different volume formats for calculations of detection of collision, as well as analyzing different situations. The use of volumes around objects is more efficient because is faster, allowing for faster renderizations, enhancing the reality of the game.

The speech can be accessed here.