Swinging Gameplay Mechanic

Unity Engine
1

Hello,
I am toying around with a gameplay mechanic and am not sure how to proceed. The goal is to have the player carry around a spear with a rope attached. When the player throws the spear it would stick to the environment then, if the spear is high enough and positioned correctly, the player can swing. This can be used to cross rivers, chasms, things like that. I followed some video tutorials and presently have a coconut you can throw that sticks to the environment:
http://www.nutrigames.com/experiment/

The coconut is a rigidbody and I got it to stick by creating a fixed joint on collision and turning it into a Kinematic rigidbody. (Basically took code from this forum).

I am not sure how to proceed at this point. Should I start by attaching the rope? What should I use for the rope? How could I make the camera “attach” to the rope and swing, perhaps with the arrow keys to generate momentum?

Also, if you try the link, you’ll notice the speed of the throw is determined by how long you hold down the left mouse button (it throws on releasing the button). The speed at which the strength changes varies greatly per computer. How do I normalize the changing speed so it’s consistent on all but extremely slow systems? Here is how I’m doing it now:

if (Input.GetButton("Fire1")) { 
			//Alter the throw force
			if (throwForce >= maxThrowForce || throwForce < minThrowForce) {
				throwForceIncrement *= -1;
			} 
			throwForce += throwForceIncrement;
}

Thanks in advance!

2

Please, anyone? I just need to know what I should research, what direction to look for swinging.

3

To make things framerate independent, multiply the speed increase by Time.deltaTime… as for the rest, hope you got things solved!

4

For a rope you could probably use a chain of rigidbodies connected with hinge joints - the documentation actually suggests this as one of the uses of hinge joints. You could set it up a rope segment with a hinge joint as a prefab. Then when the spear sticks to the target, take the distance between the camera and the target, figure out how many rope segments you need to cover that distance, and instantiate them in a line between the two points. Then just set up joints to connect them all in a chain going from the target to the camera.

Alternatively, you could have the spear instantiate rope segments behind it as it flies through the air, connecting each new segment to the last. Then if it hits a viable target, they connect to the player/camera allowing you to swing, and if it doesn’t hit a target the rope segments just get destroyed along with the spear (or you could make the player reel it back in).

The biggest problem I see with this approach is to get it to bend in a sufficiently ‘rope-y’ way you’d probably need very short segments, which means a lot of instances.