Dealing with Unity Forces for Statics Game Concept

AddForce – Unity Official Tutorials

Youtube – AddForce – Unity Official Tutorials

The bare basics of scripting forces in Unity with rigidBody’s. The AddForce can take two inputs: a vector for direction and magnitude, and what type of force it is.

ForceModes
  • Acceleration – Continuous change; not affected by mass
  • Force – (Default) Continuous change; affected by mass
  • Impulse – Instant change; affected by mass
  • VelocityChange – Instant change; not affected by mass
AddTorque – Unity Official Tutorials

Youtube – AddTorque – Unity Official Tutorials

The bare basics of scripting torques in Unity with rigidBody’s. The AddTorque can take two inputs: a vector axis to apply torque around, and what type of torque it is. This is very similar to AddForce. Important to remember, Unity uses “LEFT HAND RULE” for rotation.

ForceModes
  • Acceleration – Continuous change; not affected by mass
  • Force – (Default) Continuous change; affected by mass
  • Impulse – Instant change; affected by mass
  • VelocityChange – Instant change; not affected by mass
Game Ideation
Engineering Teaching & Research Equipment – Armfield

EF-1.1 – Statics – Forces experiment kit
Youtube – EF series video Statics Forces 1 1 3

The links are similar videos, the first is just directly to the site of those that made the kit, and the second is a Youtube link. This kit provides hand on experience for understanding a lot of topics based around static equilibrium. Topics such as 2D shape center of masses, force vectors, and much more can be covered with this tool.

Game Idea – Engineering Statics Game

Following the general idea of the kit shown above, the game environment is populated with nodes that apply controllable forces to a central ring object. These forces can be altered to change the position of the ring. The environment will spawn collectibles that the player must direct the ring towards in order to collect them. To move the ring, they will need to intelligently alter the forces applied by the nodes.

Quick sketch of concept
Concept visualization of force body diagram to show how game can function.

DIGM-540 Gear Mesh Generating Resources

  1. Basic Mesh Scripting Tool Description for Unity
  2. Creating Basic Billboard Mesh Through Unity Scripting
    Shows how to create a vertex array, set these into triangles, and create a full mesh.

  3. More Help for Procedural Generation of Mesh

This shows that it is possible to create/modify meshes within Unity using scripting.

Project Direction – Create Script in Unity that Will Take User Inputs to Instantiate a Gear Model Based on Said Parameters

This may be possible through the general use of the Mesh class in Unity scripting. Something along the lines of creating a set of vertices for the central body (some smoothness level of cylinder), then creating a gear tooth mesh that can be multiplied and geometrically positioned around the central core body mesh created.

Bump Mapping

Normal Maps from Unity

“Normal Maps and Height Maps are both types of Bump Map. They both contain data for representing apparent detail on the surface of simpler polygonal meshes, but they each store that data in a different way. A height map is a simple black and white texture, where each pixel represents the amount that point on the surface should appear to be raised. The whiter the pixel colour, the higher the area appears to be raised.

A normal map is an RGB texture, where each pixel represents the difference in direction the surface should appear to be facing, relative to its un-modified surface normal. These textures tend to have a bluey-purple tinge, because of the way the vector is stored in the RGB values.”

Displacement Maps

Unity Displacment Maps and Tesselation

Tri Setup to Create Mesh for Gear Segments
Showing example breakdown of a gear segment in tris.

Play in the Museum: Design and Development of a Game-Based Learning Exhibit for Informal Science Education

Title: Play in the Museum: Design and Development of a Game-Based Learning Exhibit for Informal Science Education

Resource: Academic Paper

Authors: Jonathan P. Rowe, Eleni V. Lobene, Bradford W. Mott, James C. Lester

Link to Paper pdf

This paper investigates the effects of game-based learning in a museum environment. It looks into ways to guide the game design in an effort to improve the amount of learning that occurs in these situations.

Validating Game-based Measures of Implicit Science Learning

Title: Validating Game-based Measures of Implicit Science Learning

Resource: Academic Paper

Authors: Elizabeth Rowe, Jodi Asbell-Clarke, Teon Edwards, Michael Eagle, Drew Hicks, Tiffany Barnes, Rebecca Brown

Link to Paper pdf

This paper investigates whether implicit science learning was occurring in students playing an optics related game. It also looks into better ways to measure this and practices to encourage it.