Need help with custom movement

[jguelker]

Hello,
could someone help me with following movement idea:

I would like to have a plane (side view) controlled with only one button. It should fly from left to right, slowly getting slower, being sucked to the ground through gravity. On button push it should be accelerated and "pull up". It should also be able to loop through and always face the direction it is looking.

I hope you understand what I mean... ;-)
I messed around with some movement and physics options but never fully got it to work. Anyone with ideas or examples?

Thanks in advance!

[salmjak]

For both cases you could use "apply impulse". Or you should atleast. Impulse is (according to wikipedia) force/time, but there is not option to add time in the settings so I don't really know what the difference is between "apply impulse" and "apply force". Impulse might get increasingly smaller though (without you deciding how fast, but still acting as a deacceleration) while force is probably applied all the time until a equilibrium has been made and the plane will just stop.

EDIT: the hard part might be calculating at which angle you want the impulse to be made at (assuming you will want the plane to rotate to simulate "crashing" and "rising")

EDIT 2: You could probably use a relatively small "apply force" at "start of frame" condition to make it act like wind (a constant force/resistance) which effect should accumulate and gradually slow down the plane more and more. Upon clicking you should just apply an impulse (which hopefully is not constant) in the opposite direction and the "wind" will still act and slow it down (since it is constant).

[jguelker]

Thanks for your ideas!
I already messed around with some impulses, but this pretty much just pushes the plane around in the frame, so even flying in the opposite direction, it still facesthe other one. Going down it still faces straight forward...
Any ideas?

[salmjak]

Yeah, an impulse will do that :P It's important that you add a resistance (a constant force) for it to gradually slow down.
Ex. condition "start at fram" + action "Plane apply force 10 degrees 180" (this will apply a force of 10 to the left) then add this to when you click: condition "click" + action "Plane apply impulse 15 degrees 50". This should accelerate your plane upwards, but since the force of the impulse will diminish it is important that the force of the impulse is larger than the force of the resistance (which would be 10 in the direction of 225 degrees ("wind"+gravity).

The vital difference between impulse and force is that an impulse is time limited, it is weird that you can not set the time :S (which might make it act like a force instead and then nothing of this will work)

What I think you have to do is to edit the hot-spot for the plane to be at the "nose" of the plane. I think the hot-spot is where the forces are acting. Make sure that you allow rotation aswell!

EDIT: You might also want to apply "angular impulse" at the same time you apply your impulse, this will basically apply a force that rotates your object (the plane) for a limited time.