Hinges that dont connect to the stage even when there is only 1 wheel (Useful for circles with motors that you don't want to stick to the stage).

Magnets, no need for description, brings me to my next suggestion).

Elements, Wood, Metal, Rock, Fire, Steam.
- Wood is burnt by fire (either shrinks the object or more complex, slowly deletes affected areas of the fire) also have low bounciness and floats in water.
- Metal is attracted by magnets and more complex has heat properties when burnt by fire. If over a certain heat turns water to steam but the metal cools faster low bounciness, sinks in water.
- Rock isn't affected by fire but breaks when dropped from an altitude. Sinks in water, low bounciness.
- Fire, affects the above as mentioned. Goes out in water but turns water to steam.
- Steam a gas that floats upwards and fades away unless it comes in contact with a ceiling type object in which it can condense.

Scale objects (I think it is already in to do list), a priority!

Maybe non editable scenes. Like if someone makes a game in Phun, this would be handy for me as I am making a game called PhunTank yay!

Oh also, forum suggestion. A suggestions forum. Much better.

Last edited by Zuriki (2008-03-05 12:43:23)

Chain thing is in TODO.txt

PHUN media section would be good cause I have nowhere to put my video

Suggestions I've seen other people make that I want to second:

* String - like a non-stretchy chain.

* Gears - for simplicity's sake, perhaps just set number of teeth and have diameter adjust automatically. This would ensure that all gears would mesh nicely.

* Rocket motors - Attach to an object. Adjustable thrust. Option to control with keystrokes. Option to display rocket motor / flame. (When display is off, rocket motor can be used to simulate a force being applied, as if an invisible hand is at work.)

* Explosives - Variable strength omnidirectional force. Options might include delay until detonation, detonation upon impact, detonation by keyboard control.

* More keyboard control options - map arbitrary keystrokes to individual controllable objects (ie, Q makes motor 1 turn clockwise, W makes motor 1 turn anti-clockwise, E makes rocket 1 fire, etc).

* Select and scale

* Subtractive geometry - with object B on top of object A, cut all overlapping area out of object A and destroy object B. Would greatly ease construction.

Suggestions I've not seen elsewhere:

* Buttons. When a Button is pushed, initiate some action, like when a user presses a key. Adjustable duration per button press (ie, action persists as long as button is held down when duration is zero, otherwise action persists a set amount of time after the key is pressed.) Adjustable enforced off-after-on period (ie, action can be retriggered immediately when off period is zero, otherwise button "doesn't work" until off period expires). Optionally queued (ie, when set to queued, a button press during on-period or off-period will be delayed until both periods conclude, then triggered.)

* Pistons - Currently, pistons can be created from scratch. The sliding shaft often drags and twists against its chamber, however, seemingly regardless of settings (friction, mass, etc). Sometimes the sliding shaft escapes entirely from the chamber, allowing everything to go haywire. With a specific piston object, perhaps the piston could be constrained to linear motion only. This could both simplify the physics calculations and prevent malfunctions. Optionally, allow the piston to actuate periodically on its own, with a set speed and strength, like a motor. Optionally, allow the piston to be actuated in response to a keystroke, also like a motor.

* Hinge limits - Allow minimum and maximum rotation of a hinge to be set (ie, 45 degrees to 180 degrees, permitting motion within that range only.)

* Select and group - grouped objects would always be selected and transformed as one, until ungrouped

* Object templates - after selecting a group of objects, save with a name. Saved, named objects populate an object library. User can utilize a new "stamp" tool to create instances of that object from the object library. Instances would be born grouped, but could be ungrouped.

A key that toggles the display of all the menus would be nice when recording video. Right now I have to hide them in the bottom corners, record, then drag them back out if I want to use them. A toggle would be great for this.

And is there any way you might be able to include an option to apply "skins" to objects? And by that I mean there would be an option somewhere near the color change menu that when clicked would prompt you for a bitmap or a jpeg or whatever that would be used instead of a color, either stretched to fit the object's width and height or tiled.

Also, I've often found myself needing to add some simple text to a simulation and as of now I have two options: 1. Add the text via an image/video editing program after I've taken a screenshot or recorded video or 2. Draw each letter with the brush tool, which always turns out sloppy and takes a long time. I would love to have a new tool that allows you to add captions to things. Basically it would just be a textarea that you could fill up with whatever and then you could attach it to things just like any other object.

I have no idea if any of these are feasible, but they were the only things I could think of that hadn't been mentioned yet.

Phun is great! One other thing that would be a very useful addition..

A drain and faucet

The faucet would allow you to create water continually and adjust the pressure and flow rate.

The drain would allow you to get rid of the flow and save memory (no need to wait for it to fall all the way to the bottom of the scene.)

This way you could really explore fluid dynamics!


Thanks!

Display kinetic and potential energy.  One assumes that energy is conserved in the simulation, at least until the user adds objects or drags them. 

If so, it would be fun to see a display of the current kinetic and potential energy in the system.  This would probably make sense only if the simulation uses some kind of sensible units in its calculations.

It would be even cooler to see momentum vectors on all moving objects, but I think that might be too compute intensive.

I will second diabolik's observation that it is hard to make pistons.  I tried, using boxes to make the edges smooth, and still my piston got twisted.  I don't know if the best solution is to have a primitive for piston, though.  Maybe it would suffice if we could get good fine control on dimensions and positions of objects.

Or maybe we need the ability to constrain an object such that it can only translate along a given line, but can not rotate.  This would be the opposite of a hinge, which constrains one point on the object in XY, but allows free rotation. 
.

-Anything that would help the polygon design! (Add/Substract tools... better line tool, etc)...
-Scalable polygons
-Any kind of trigger...that could start or stop a motor (hinge) would be cool. (I know the keyboard can do, but I want something in my scene to trigger it...)

And... a Mac Version ASAP so I can play on my computer instead of on the GF's laptop

Well, the most obvious thing - scripting. I would probably suggest lua, fairly easy to get going I think.

It is obvious that we can add much more functionality to Phun - but wouldn't there be a risk that the basic functionality is forgotten with all the bells and whistles? For example,  we thought about adding a built-in rocket engine to Phun, but before this happened, someone instead came up with the brilliant idea of using compressed rigid bodies as  a propellant.

Nature suggestions :


Wind  - being able to set on/off and to set the speed of it .It would be awesome.

Rain - Being able to turn on / off .It would affect the environment  , like if you place 1 stick that's hardly holding an orizontal stick , the rain would make it fall ,in a few words it would interact with objects.

General suggestion :

Adding a feature to the "no-colide" option : When you set an object to not colide with something , you have to chose : NO colide with everything or select the things you don't want it to colide with.Like this i will be able to make a motor wheel on a wall , then i'll fix a stick on the ball [giving it the option to not colide with the wall]then it would rotate with the ball around the wall ,without coliding it , but still being able to interact with other stuff like water.I don't think you understood , here's a small screenshot oh how it's now .





You see , the stick stopped there in the wall ,so it couldn't continue the way.So if i give it the option to not colide , it won't colide with the water anymore , and that wouldn't be good , because that's why i'm using that "arm" on the ball ,to move the water.So a more advenced "coliding system" would be great.Give an object the status to not colide with :that wall ,but in rest it will colide with everything ,or give it many many more things to not colide with .I hope you understand.


                          Phun fan !

Last edited by MasacruTheArcher (2008-03-07 07:59:42)