Suggestion for the explosion power: controllable number of fragments spawned

[smjjames]

First, I'd like to make an example to show a point, take the earth-moon sim and explode the sim, by the time the dust cools off and goes back down to whatever you have the max non-attracting particles set to (mine is at 2500), it'll have spawned over 9k small fragments, both pun intended and being serious, there really are over 9k fragments. I'm sure you would agree that over 9k fragments is kind of overboard, and kills performance, right?

Now though, back in Ubox2 (the previous iteration), you could set the number of bodies that are generated by that iterations version of explode, say you wanted 100, you could set it to 100, or 10, or 50, or even 10,000 if you actually wanted that many fragments.

So, my suggestion is to have a way to control the number of fragments generated so that it doesn't go to some wild high number.

Theres some possible ways that it could be done (disclaimer: I know nothing about how the system works programming wise). Say, if you wanted something to explode into about 100 fragments (whether there is a core remnant or not would be optional), you could have it calculate the amount of dust needed to produce roughly that amount of fragments. Another possibility is using SPH.

[BrandCollision]

The explode feature is not even working for me, unfortunitly

[Gordon Freeman]

>Powers
>Exploder
>Click body

[BrandCollision]

>Powers
>Exploder
>Click body

Oh, i was useing the control shown by H

[Eras]

Yes it will be good because when i explode a planet, US frezees ._.

[gabriel.dac]

Total fragment amount calculated by the most prevalent materials in the body, e.g. a rocky body will eject mostly silicate fragments

from the google doc file

[smjjames]

Total fragment amount calculated by the most prevalent materials in the body, e.g. a rocky body will eject mostly silicate fragments

from the google doc file

I'm not talking about the material of the fragments, just the number of fragments.

It may be that a different power will need to be implemented, one which does set the number of fragments.

[Estwald]

It seems like more fragments are made at slow time warp. I find that the best way to simulate the formation of earth's moon from the impact hypothesis, is by doing a earth-mars collision, set H angle to 45 degrees and impact speed at 4.0. Let it run as slow as you are patient to do so, and once mars finishes colliding and fragments form, you can speed it back up. The fragments won't actually coelesce, but it still leaves a lot of fragments in orbit once they cool down.

[Jar]

As mentioned in the release notes, this was just the first pass on re-implementing the explode feature.  There is still a lot of work to be done on it, including optimizing the amount of fragments that are spawned. Being able to control this variable is a good idea.

[smjjames]

As mentioned in the release notes, this was just the first pass on re-implementing the explode feature.  There is still a lot of work to be done on it, including optimizing the amount of fragments that are spawned. Being able to control this variable is a good idea.

I'm aware that it's a first pass, just wanted to get that suggestion out there.

[C7]

The fragment count is based on the available budget. At a certain point, we'll hit the limit of your computer's power.

That said, we would like to expose a lot more options to make explosions more fun. This first pass is mostly there just to see what we want to do, and the technical challenges we need to solve, in order to properly implement the explosions. (Such as special FX, better placement for the fragment particles and so on).