Need Help: Towing an object in the game engine

Hi All,

I’ve been trawling various resources including this one to try to find any advice on achieving what I need in BGE, but no joy as yet. Any help would be massively appreciated.

Background: I’m planning a game where one of the main mechanics is having something towed on the end of a taught rope behind a fast moving vehicle. The vehicle will be autonomous, and follow a random route, the player is on the other end of the rope ‘hitching a ride’.

First things first, I need to get a rope that acts appropriately as the object is being towed, pulls taught and slackens when the vehicle slows (I will need to ‘retract’ the rope eventually under those conditions, so the ideal would be that the rope eventually remains taught). Also needs to go round corners and behave properly, including having the rope collide with objects and pull round the corner, imagine the vehicle turning a corner on a road, and the rope wrapping around a lamp post.

I’m not sure normal physics is going to cut it, I imagine it’s going to be a combination of scripting and physics, but any advice or examples that might help would be most appreciated.

Cheers

Paul

Hey!
The only way I know how to achieve that would be rigid body joints. With that method and a lot of rigid bodies you will have all the effects you mentioned.
Here is an example on a chain, for your case you would have to create an armature on the rope and create bone constraints that follow the rigid bodies:
http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://www.blendswap.com/files/images/2011/11/blend_21177/mtalhalodhi_vlcsnap_2011_11_16_18h57m38s90_small_79aa8db23aa705db614cdf6b0322580adae56510.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.blendswap.com/tag/blender-chain-rope-real-time-game-engine-bge-animation&h=200&w=200&sz=5&tbnid=oMBqErpy8yaChM:&tbnh=102&tbnw=102&zoom=1&usg=__hRXgMGAViENrcoiDBhgDOVhA-nM=&docid=vYOyX-Kyr_ZDmM&sa=X&ei=HL25UvzdDsfPtQb-0YGoDw&ved=0CGgQ9QEwBw&dur=328

This might be close to what your looking for Carchase.blend (743 KB) . It is something I made really quickly with ridged body joints as stated up above. Control car with WASD

Brilliant, thanks both, certainly given me something to start with, I’ll start tinkering with this approach and see how ti pans out.

Cheers

Paul