Physics Programming

The work sits between mathematics and feel. Rigid bodies, collision detection and response, constraints and joints, friction and restitution, integration over a fixed timestep - all of it has to be stable when a player does something nobody tested, and fast enough that it never costs a frame. Much of the day goes into the failure cases: objects sinking through floors, jitter at rest, a stack that explodes, a vehicle that launches off a seam in the terrain.

In a networked game the problems multiply, because two machines running the same simulation must reach the same result, or the game has to decide which one is right.

Postings here often distinguish between the simulation that serves gameplay and the one that serves looks. Cloth, hair and destruction effects are closer to the art pipeline; this tag is usually about the physics the player's actions depend on.