[kibbi]

Did your game require realistic physics collisions? If not, this might be unnecessary complexity. Almost no 2D shoot'em up game before 2000, and very few afterwards, go this route. Here's the common method to make a shmup with very simple rectangle comparisons:

https://kidscancode.org/blog/2016/08/pygame_shmup_part_3/

But if your space debris objects are supposed to collide and agglomerate realistically, and if the player ships are supposed to have difficulty pushing a cluster of heavy objects out of the way, then using a physics library is sensible.

[lukan]

I think it is waaaaay easier and likely more performant to just use a subset of Box2D or (rapier), than implementing simple physic yourself.

They are quite optimized and performant libaries already and there are tons of tutorials for box2d out there (thanks to iforce).

You just add some shapes of your liking and call world.step

[onetimeuse92304]

It does requires realistic collisions.

The point is you fly in a small spaceship in an arena, you hide behind obstacles, you shoot with a small variety of weapons and you use your weapons to either shoot the enemy directly or rearrange the map to make life difficult for your them. The collisions need to be realistic because you need to be able to predict what is going to happen when you hit things a certain way.

It is just a concept we are playing with.

Another part of that concept is that this game is meant for small kids that can't read. There is not a single letter or digit in the entire game. No menu. You just start the controller and get immediately pulled into the game.

And another feature is we wanted the game fun because the control feel fun and immediate. So we are experimenting a lot with what it means for the controls to be enjoyable.