>Programming is chaotic magic. There are no rules. You ask a game dev “Can the player summon a giant demon that bursts from the ground in an explosion of lava?” and they’ll say “sure, that’s easy” and then you’ll ask “can the player wear a scarf?” and they’ll go “oof”
What do you mean? The examples show use cases we have to think of. When designing worlds, or at least rooms players walk in freely, these questions about doors must be answered.
Ideally, of course, we could just physically model them, and then: wooden doors can be hacked away with an axe, a steel door could perhaps be forced using a crowbar but not if the frame is reinforced, etc. But, the modelling based on actual physical behavior is hard, both coding wise as well as computationally wise. So, we accept that we must do a simplified model and yet we must make it not too simple so that it still believably acts as a door in the virtual world.
Game dev is one of the most unconstrained software domains. On the one hand it's what makes it exciting and endlessly interesting, but it's also what can make it a nightmare. Perhaps most simply because computers are really not up to the task of simulating worlds, and so much hackery and smoke and mirrors are required.
Start with game jams. When you're constrained to make a complete game in 48/72 hours, suddenly you start to understand what's important and what's not. Granted, I haven't done any doors in my jam games yet =)
Readit News
-Alex Blechman
The Door Problem (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24313607 - Aug 2020 (11 comments)
The Door Problem (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16021509 - Dec 2017 (27 comments)
Why video game doors are so hard to get right https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYEWsLdLmcc
Ideally, of course, we could just physically model them, and then: wooden doors can be hacked away with an axe, a steel door could perhaps be forced using a crowbar but not if the frame is reinforced, etc. But, the modelling based on actual physical behavior is hard, both coding wise as well as computationally wise. So, we accept that we must do a simplified model and yet we must make it not too simple so that it still believably acts as a door in the virtual world.
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