Damage inflicted by speed, not height

[voxelproof]

There is a stark incosistency in MT Game concerning the way a player's character takes damage. As far as I know, no matter how fast a player moves horizontally, hitting an obstacle in such movement causes no damage, while there's meticulously crafted mechanism for calculating damage due to falling from certain height. Wouldn't it make more sense if the damage was dependent solely on player's speed and not direction of movement?

[warpnarget]

i agree

[CalebJ]

No, this isn't completely true ... Momentum can inflict damage. Try dropping 20m, then try flying (with fast mode) 15m down and then quickly turn fly mode off (your momentum will propel you faster into the ground, inflicting much more damage).
However, for players without such priveledges (fast in particular), you are absolutely right. I'd like to see it implemented!

[paramat]

One issue though is that anyone flying fast or using fast mode on the ground would very often die, when those special 'superpower' modes should not really cause damage.
However, if we disable horizontal damage in these 'fast' modes, then horizonatal damage would almost never occur because the player walks at 4 n/s, and i doubt that sprinting mods would cause a speed high enough to cause damage either.
So it seems this has not been done because there has not been much need for it yet.
Related https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/8051

Momentum is speed times mass. Because players all have the same mass we can refer to either speed or momentum, it does not matter.

Strictly, MT damage is caused by a rapid change to zero of the vertical component of velocity.

[Festus1965]

Thanks, you wrote it: for normal walk
Can a player run or fly WITH FAST or special like LavaBoots horizontal as fast he can fall ?

[rubenwardy]

Minetest already does this, but only on the vertical component. Fall damage comes from a change in velocity in the veritcal component in a particular direction

[Hume2]

The minimum height for falldamage is 6m, which corresponds to speed approx. 11m/s. The walk speed is 4 m/s. In default settings, only minetest_wadsprint and xtraores combined with sprint can make the player exceed 11km/h. However, running and falling at once could cause a bit more damage than just falling.

[Astrobe]

Nitpick: damage should be a function of the kinetic energy, so momentum times speed, or mass times (speed squared).
That said, since fall acceleration does not depend on the mass of the object, MT doesn't currently have (AFAIK) a built-in notion of mass to begin with.

[Hume2]

Actually, assigning a mass to players and entities wouldn't be that bad. As I suggested here, the liquids can be assigned a density. That would make many mods with aquatic mobs far lighter. Currently, they have loads of if-clauses which check whether the mob is in water or isn't. If they had a mass, the engine would care itself.

[voxelproof]

One issue though is that anyone flying fast or using fast mode on the ground would very often die, when those special 'superpower' modes should not really cause damage.
However, if we disable horizontal damage in these 'fast' modes, then horizonatal damage would almost never occur because the player walks at 4 n/s, and i doubt that sprinting mods would cause a speed high enough to cause damage either.
So it seems this has not been done because there has not been much need for it yet.

Of course I'm aware that with no mods the basic game mechanics doesn't need it badly. However there are already quite a few good mods (including your 'drifting car') featuring different vehicles, like bike for the simplest example. Adding such mechanics in my opinion is much needed to provide more realistic and interesting interactions with the environment, otherwise using fast moving vehicles doesn't differ significantly from the different default modes of movement as far as needed caution is concerned and it makes it less interesting and, sometimes, even boring. To say nothing of the possibilities of applying such feature in mods like Advanced Trains, and last but not least, the educational aspect for the kids :)

[paramat]

To be clear, i am not rejecting the idea as not needed, just writing that it has not been much needed in the past.
Increasingly, this feature would be somewhat useful.

Player mass actually exists in the code as a player property, but is a constant and is unused.

[voxelproof]

To be clear, i am not rejecting the idea as not needed, just writing that it has not been much needed in the past.
Increasingly, this feature would be somewhat useful.

Player mass actually exists in the code as a player property, but is a constant and is unused.

I really hope it will someday be implemented. It would open way for racing mods, and riding bike in the woods would be more engaging too. And players who don't want it should be able to disable it in the general settings.

[Wuzzy]

Related:

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/9219

[Astrobe]

Thinking about it, also related: collision detection callback.

[sorcerykid]

Thinking about it, also related: collision detection callback.

Entity collision detection entirely via callback in Minetest S3. :)


Demonstration of Extended Motion Mechanics in Minetest S3
https://vimeo.com/316098852

The callback receives both old_vel and new_vel as well as the axis of collision, so it would be easy to inflict damage based on speed.

I will see about opening a PR and porting these API changes over to the official branch. It definitely makes coding mobs so much easier.

[voxelproof]

Thinking about it, also related: collision detection callback.

Entity collision detection entirely via callback in Minetest S3. :)

The callback receives both old_vel and new_vel as well as the axis of collision, so it would be easy to inflict damage based on speed.

I will see about opening a PR and porting these API changes over to the official branch. It definitely makes coding mobs so much easier.

It would be fantastic. Thanks for your interest.

[sorcerykid]

Thanks voxelproof! I actually have a PR already opened for this feature :)

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/9717

A fully working proof of concept is my my Mobs Lite mod which uses the move_result and old_vel to calculate fall damage, so it would be very easy to generalize that for speed damage.

https://github.com/sorcerykid/mobs/blob ... .lua#L1265