Physics?

[Pxtl]

Okay, I just saw Syntensity on Happypenguin and decided to look into it - I was an avid Sauerbraten player, but was always sad that the user-creativity of the project was limited to map-dev instead of game-dev.

So, I'm curious about Syntensity's capabilities for custom game-design right now, and I can't find much in the wiki. How stable is the Javascript API? If I start a project now, will I be hitting a moving target?

Is the javascript gameplay all server-side and echo'd to the client? Or the reverse? I ask because I always love to play with custom player-physics (flight models, etc), and that's a place where you really, really hit synchronization issues between server and client unless you have deep, nitty-gritty access to both the client and server (or peer) state. Is the camera fixed-upright, or can you have characters banking like a realistic aircraft or a "Descent" ship?

[kripken]

The JavaScript API is evolving, but we take snapshots. So, for stability you can use an earlier version (library/1_1 or 1_2). However, even in the latest, changing version (library/1_3), for the most part things should continue to work. If they don't, it is likely a bug that we should fix.

You can run scripts on both client and server, and in fact a major aspect of the API is to let you easily define what code runs where and how to sync things.

You can control the camera entirely using scripts, an example of that is in the 'platformer' test map (should be accessible in the left room in the lobby, currently the screenshot for it is a big '?' character). Note that I only tested controlling the camera's position, yaw and pitch, but not roll. But if roll doesn't work, let me know and I'll fix it.

So, it should be possible to do a flight-based game. In fact a different (nonrealistic) flight game in progress is here: http://www.syntensity.com:8888/tracker/activity/view/b38cc2e9_2c84_46f4_934d_c09766e0dd8d/ (you need to run a server with it, see the wiki pages on requisitioning).

- kripken