Using physics in a 2d game

Hi, Recently, me and one of my cousins tried to make a game for the gmtk game jam. We Planned it all out on Friday and I was able to finish all the art By Sunday. We were having some problems developing it because of the physics of the game. We planned for the player to be able to use one of a few items, like a bouncy ball and a magnet to manipulate Items in the level. For example, using a ball to break a vase and using a magnet to pull keys to the right spot. I gave him the background of all the levels and all the items and tables separately. He’s been trying to develop it over the week but was having issues due to the physics. when he was trying to make the game, the engine didn’t recognize what objects were in front and what objects were behind. I’m not huge on unity and don’t really know how to help. Does anyone have experience with this kind of game or know what we can do to fix it?

I gave some examples of the levels, so for example in one of the levels the player needs to use the magnet to move keys from the door to the vent in order to hide the keys

Nobody here can type a magical set of letters in this little teeny tiny non-graphical box that will give you insight into how something as complicated as physics and realtime software works!

Like anything you want to learn, go do tutorials for it. There are millions… do the first three tutorials that come up on googling for Unity 2d physics.

Make sure you do BOTH Step #1 and Step #2 below, or you are wasting your time.

Tutorials and example code are great, but keep this in mind to maximize your success and minimize your frustration:

How to do tutorials properly, two (2) simple steps to success:

Step 1. Follow the tutorial and do every single step of the tutorial 100% precisely the way it is shown. Even the slightest deviation (even a single character!) generally ends in disaster. That’s how software engineering works. Every step must be taken, every single letter must be spelled, capitalized, punctuated and spaced (or not spaced) properly, literally NOTHING can be omitted or skipped.

Fortunately this is the easiest part to get right: Be a robot. Don’t make any mistakes.
BE PERFECT IN EVERYTHING YOU DO HERE!!

If you get any errors, learn how to read the error code and fix your error. Google is your friend here. Do NOT continue until you fix your error. Your error will probably be somewhere near the parenthesis numbers (line and character position) in the file. It is almost CERTAINLY your typo causing the error, so look again and fix it.

Step 2. Go back and work through every part of the tutorial again, and this time explain it to your doggie. See how I am doing that in my avatar picture? If you have no dog, explain it to your house plant. If you are unable to explain any part of it, STOP. DO NOT PROCEED. Now go learn how that part works. Read the documentation on the functions involved. Go back to the tutorial and try to figure out WHY they did that. This is the part that takes a LOT of time when you are new. It might take days or weeks to work through a single 5-minute tutorial. Stick with it. You will learn.

Step 2 is the part everybody seems to miss. Without Step 2 you are simply a code-typing monkey and outside of the specific tutorial you did, you will be completely lost. If you want to learn, you MUST do Step 2.

Of course, all this presupposes no errors in the tutorial. For certain tutorial makers (like Unity, Brackeys, Imphenzia, Sebastian Lague) this is usually the case. For some other less-well-known content creators, this is less true. Read the comments on the video: did anyone have issues like you did? If there’s an error, you will NEVER be the first guy to find it.

Beyond that, Step 3, 4, 5 and 6 become easy because you already understand!

Thanks for the reply! I’m pretty much asking if what we want to do is even doable (items and things traveling along the z axis on a 2d game,I don’t think these tutorials mention that). We understand how to use the physics unity offers, but are confused how to apply it to this specific situation

Generally everything is possible.

The Unity Physics2D system “takes place” in the X/Y plane at Z == 0

You can make mimic non-physics objects and cause them to track any number of Physics objects in any orientation you want, even tilted or wrapped around an uneven surface. It’s just math.

By using sorting layer, sprite masks, and even some code, you can manipulate the visibility of 2D objects so it “appears” to go behind a wall or something. Get creative when googling something. Here is 3 sec search i did on “unity 2d magnet effect”

Moving along X and Y is very easy and a basic 101 of Unity 2D. Just give it an ol’ Goog

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“Moving along X and Y” is 2/3rds of the moving that I do!

On days when I time travel, then X/Y is only half of my moving though…

OP, go checkout any tutorials for anything… but pay attention to how they break down the problem as they solve it. When you begin to break problems down, then it becomes far easier to find solutions for each part as you go along.

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