Proposed changes to bowling

[vtipoman]

Few days ago, a bowling guide was posted by @anon69327393 . While I find the guide very well written and thought-through, I personally think it shows that bowling could use some changes.

Remove the ability to “slide” one’s cursor along the side of their screen
If you don’t know already, when throwing your bowling ball, you can “slide” your mouse cursor along the border of your screen. This, combined with gently pushing againts said border, allows for perfectly straight throws everytime. I personally see this as an exploit, so I suggest it gets fixed/removed.

Change how the cursor’s speed affects the ball’s speed
As of now, the speed with which you slide your mouse forward doesn’t matter all that much. I think there’s some difference in the final speed your bowling ball is thrown with, but I suggest those differences are made much more prominent. If you, during the “throwing” phase, move your mouse really slowly, your character should throw the bowling ball at a very reduced speed, which should lead to the ball stopping entirely/not dropping any pins/sliding off the lane. Alternatively, increase the speed with which you need to move your cursor for the throw to even register.

Finetune the physics so a strike requires curving your ball
In real bowling, if you want a strike, you need to curve your ball at least somehow. I think the physics should be finetuned, so adding spin to your ball is not only viable, but required to get a perfect score.

Add some variation
Now this is a tricky one, since most people don’t want Wii sports-like minigames, obstacles, or additional modes. While I’d like those, I have a different suggestion ready to please those who like realism in their virtual bowling. Oil patterns. They are basically layers of oil covering all bowling lanes, and there’s a plethera of them, each having a different oil layout. I suggest the game randomly picks one when you start a game of bowling and visibly displays it on the lane. That would increase the skill required to perform well, while keeping things realistic and fair. Having the pattern deteriorate would also be pretty cool, but I’m pretty sure that’s out of the scope.

[ilipitagaon]

Right now it’s easy to get a strike most of the time, but let’s not forget this is supposed to be casual and fun game you play. I think the game is becoming way too complex to just have fun with all of your suggestions.

I don’t know about variations as well. It sounds cool and really fun, but I think it’s getting too much, unless you can choose not to have such mutators.

Now, I have no problem with these getting added with some type of “hardcore” mode that the players can select, but if not I’m against them.

I agree about edge-screen sliding, though. All that needs to be done right now is have a red zone on both sides so the players can’t touch them.

[macdguy]

@vtipoman

Remove the ability to “slide” one’s cursor along the side of their screen

I am working on a fix.

@vtipoman

Change how the cursor’s speed affects the ball’s speed

This actually is already the case, but I could tweak it more.

@vtipoman

Finetune the physics so a strike requires curving your ball

There is no real way to do this as the pin collision is handled in PhysX and is not deterministic.

@vtipoman

Add some variation

As for oil patterns:

Better ball physics for bowling

Hi @Untraced, I’m the guy who wrote the physics for the bowling stuff. We use a prediction system for our bowling trajectories. The entire trajectory is a single deterministic function which can be extrapolated over a period of time. The purpose of this approach is to reduce network lag and increase server performance (less physics calculations). While I had considered implementing a hook-like system by stitching together multiple trajectories, we decided that it was outside of the scope of …