Physics System Rework Discussion

[RobDavenport]

Related to #4 and #2

Currently, we are using the (very awesome) crate Rapier.rs for our physics and collision logic. It's an extremely full-featured create, intended for more general physics simulations.

I wonder if this is overkill for the simplistic and arcade-y nature of the game. For example, some conversions need to be made between "pixel/screen space" and "physics space" when drawing the characters. We also need to constantly juggle between the concept of real physics for numerical values like gravity (represented in meters / second), character sizes (also represented ni meters), and the character sizes which... are probably only a few centimers tall 😂

There's an argument for moving to a much more simpler physics system, something faster, simple, pixel driven, which can be much easier to reason about and not require serious mathematics knowledge to use. Also, generally character controllers are going to be kinematic bodies anyway, so we lose much of the features from Rapier anyway, because we are updating the locations of our players through code and not through the phyics engine.

This article aboute Celeste & Towerfalls Physics is a great example. Macroquad also has a similar macroquad-platformer crate which is also based on the Celeste & Towerfall article and may be applicable here. Jumpy, another Spicy Lobster game, has a quite minimal physics example here.

Does anyone have suggestions as to why we should keep things the way they are? Or does it seem like moving to a simpler physics solution seem more beneficial in the long run?