LudumData

Chaos Theory by necauqua

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made by necauqua for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

This is a tiny game which answers the question 'could you gamify the double/multi pendulum simulator?'

The answer is yes, definitely, you can gamify absolutely anything, lol.

It's pretty simple, and this time I did a proper (more or less) in-game tutorial, so click the link and enjoy - or not, heheh, the game is not for everyone I guess. Also luck is involved.

I spent way too little time on it this time, I think the entirety of this could be done in like one day (not even two), but I had like 5-6 hrs/day spent on it 🤷

Physics are broken!!1!

Due to a little misunderstanding during the jam, the pendulums are super heavy, and the system loses energy due to simulation precision, there is no dampening, only 100g of gravity :) The levels then were designed around the current behavior, so I am not fixing it until after the jam because current levels are way too easy with pendulums that behave more realistically.

Credits

Background music is Wave by Alfred Grupstra from Pixabay

github https://github.com/necauqua/chaos-theory
HTML5 https://ld49.necauqua.dev/
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/chaos-theory-1

Ratings

Overall 274th 3.886⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 580th 3.568⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 29th 4.273⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 135th 4.227⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 403th 3.976⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 1175th 2.079⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1096th 3.071⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Given 27🗳️ 13🗨️

Feedback

marrs
05. Oct 2021 · 09:17 UTC
I thoroughly enjoyed this physics puzzler! Great job also on explaining the mechanics in-game. Proud to share the same title with you! :)
Gus Goucher
05. Oct 2021 · 18:53 UTC
What a cool concept! I was just messing around with this myself, but never thought to make it into a game! It's really nicely laid out and the colors are well chosen, excellent work!
Amolker
05. Oct 2021 · 19:01 UTC
Very inventive use of the theme. Very good submission.
joaosilva22
05. Oct 2021 · 19:03 UTC
The game looks great! Unfortunately I could not develop an intuition to solve these puzzles, which left me guessing all the time. Fun nonetheless!
nardandas
06. Oct 2021 · 20:50 UTC
Really cool use of the theme! I made a pendulum solver for my game as well, but only ended up using a single pendulum. I thought the damping was a bit much, energy decayed very rapidly.
eptwalabha
06. Oct 2021 · 20:57 UTC
Very cool concept, music, game.
I wish there were more levels to play. I manage to get a +3 on one of the target.
Nice job on this submission
🎤 necauqua
06. Oct 2021 · 22:19 UTC
@nardandas funniest thing is that the pendulum is just a rope (verlet+jacobi), so 'energy decay' is from high gravity, which is so high only for it not to be horribly slow on 60 fps

@eptwalabha thanks! I'm planning to make a level editor, I've enough interested people in my discord to make a few dozens of levels at least :)

Not to mention a ton of fixes/improvements that I have to do
Kaiomoi
07. Oct 2021 · 16:17 UTC
Nice use of the theme. I really like the curves created by the hangers, it's almost hypnotic.

But it's a bit complicated for me xD

congratulations
BluishGreenPro
07. Oct 2021 · 21:35 UTC
Took a little bit of time to understand the intricacies of the simulation, but pretty neat once you figure it out!
zimny11
12. Oct 2021 · 23:21 UTC
I like simulation of multi pendulum and I must admit I never though that I will ever see a game about it! Interesting game concept. The music is nice too. Good Job.
Hawkin
13. Oct 2021 · 12:34 UTC
The progression of the tutorial was the perfect pace. I appreciated the thought you put into that! The visual and sonic scape were perfect to sit back and relax to.

By the way, this has a very similar look and feel to an orbital sim I made for LD47! Clearly I'm a fan of sims, so this game was right up my alley :) It's interesting how non-deterministic the system is, but that's pendulums for you! The difficulty curve scaled pretty quickly, so I admittedly cheesed one of the levels. The physics went way out of whack with so many levers >:)

![Untitled.png](///raw/319/53/z/481c5.png)
Misfire_dev
21. Oct 2021 · 12:29 UTC
Really fun and weird game :D its always fun to try and break a physics simulation as well, it ends up 100% unstable, great job :D
LCStark
21. Oct 2021 · 13:20 UTC
Making a puzzle game out of chaos theory? Why not! There is something zen-like about watching those shapes appear on screen. It was a great idea to add a soft-reset, but leave the previously drawn path on screen.
LDJam user 259103
21. Oct 2021 · 18:46 UTC
Really enjoyed this one! The aesthetics were nice and clean, and the tutorial was really helpful. Quite fun to play too!

Nice work :)