it´s been a long time, but I finally got back to work with the BGE.
Here´s a fun project I worked on, which is a completly physics based catapult.
The Trebuchet is build up of individual rigid bodies, which are connect by Joints.
It behaves quite realistically and is a lot of fun to play around with. I also had to turn up the physics substeps very high, in order for it to work.
If you have any ideas for other medieval machines that could be built in the BGE, please tell me.
Feel free to try out building a machine like this yourself, it´s a lot of fun.
Technically what you’ve built there though is a catapult.
A trebuchet has two essential parts:
a flexible sling for holding the projectile, not a cup or basket. this could be possible with a rigid body chain, though how to handle detachment would be a problem. I guess you could terminate the rope joint at a specific time firing the sling along with the shot.
a free hanging counterweight. The fact that it can continue to swing until all the potential energy has been extracted, instead of hitting a stop bar is what gives the treb so much power.
Here are some nice videos of real trebuchets:
and my favorite, though it goes off a bit early:
I think by watching the last video you could get some ideas for making one, and what not to do (I think their counterweight sets up some kind of feedback loop which disrupts the swing).
I’d love to see you throw a car! I think Adriansnetlis has got some nice ones…
Awesome! good job on this so far. I tried to make something like this a few years ago, and it was just a big headache with so many bugs.
It’s really cool to see you got it to work.
I would only use 1 rigid body joint, and use compound parenting for all the parts that don’t move, else you are using more physics then need be, and the end result looks the same, make sure the root object is in the center of gravity, and has the weight of all catapult pieces.
(the root object needs compound checked in physics settings)
