Generating a pixel-perfect collider for an object at runtime

Questions & Answers
1

Hello.

I had this idea of a game, where players can build spaceships out of prefab parts [engines, hull, generators], and then the ship gets converted to a sprite, where each pixel represents an element of the ship [enabling the players to “draw” their own ship sprite by using the parts]

I have a general idea on how would that be done, the only issue I have with my theory is collisions. Is there a way to use the Unitys built-in physics engine for that? The ships would be an array of say 128x128 pixels[parts] at max, so assigning a prefabbed collider for each pixel would be an idiot move probably [16384 colliders at max, on EACH SINGLE SHIP. Yeah.]

Is there a way to automatically generate the collider, based on the sprites alpha and pixels [keeping in mind players will try and abuse it somehow, like building one pixel thick “arms”, or such] without writing a whole physics engine from scratch? And yeah, without using an outside “collider generator” script - I like to do my own stuff.

Any pointers? Would it be hard? Would it be even possible to make an efficient system working as such? Is there god?

Thanks in advance.

2

Okay, I quite understand what you mean, but now about the problem with players being humans [which means they will always try to find an advantage], making unreal ships consisting of 1 pixel thick lines or weird non-full shapes, how could that work? Added that I don’t think unity has enough physics engine power to actually find out a collision occured on a fast moving object [bulled] hiting a 1 pixel thick collider line. PLUS, that would make it hard if not impossible to cause damage to a ship part [not having health of the whole ship, but instead being able to destroy every pixel by itself]