Unsolicited TA Advice

[evan-erdos]

Hi guys, this is just my feedback, not a graded assessment or a real problem.
As a general rule, my Tactful and Well-Considered Advice® is just that: advice.
Neither my opinions nor I have any impact on your grade, so don't worry about it.
Also, it's a fun interactive checklist! Go for it! Check things off!

• Get some real fancy ball effects on up in there!
  If you add a light and some fancy 3D shimmer to your ball,
  you'll know exactly where it is, all day, every day.
  You maybe want to put a trail on the ball too, to track your shots.

• Get some dust motes up in there!
  This may appear to be some silly irrelevant toy, but it's extremely useful.
  It's a title shot outdoors in the ballpark, just like everything by keijiro.
  You could use it to faintly indicate the wicket's force-fields,
  and you should absolutely use it to alert the player to gravity switches.
  It has a velocity parameter, change it with gravity for a cool look.
  For vacuum, you may have to hack it so it converges, maybe time = -time?
  I can't think of anything better to indicate depth than dust motes.

• Gotta get that Spaceship HDR Bloom glow happening in here!
  Good old Channel Nº 3: PostProcessing, the Space Station essential.
  The radius of the bloom effect is proportional to emissive intensity,
  so if you want something to really stand out, crank it way up.

• Did you know that OnTriggerStay can be run as a coroutine?
  I think your physics woes stem from their being reduced to atomic events,
  whereas the interaction should be taking place over a span of time.
  You could kill two birds with one stone and also apply haptics here, too.

  IEnumerator OnTriggerStay(Collider other) {
      while (other.attachedRigidbody?.name=="Ball") {
          yield return new WaitForFixedUpdate();
  
          // apply haptics over time
          // intensity => 0 as t0+dt => t0+n for n second delay
  
          // apply forces to the ball multiplied by fixedDeltaTime
          // maybe realign ball velocity to mallet forward
  
          // play sound or maybe restart or stop sound, play with volume
          // maybe pitch depends on how orthogonal the mallet is
          // maybe play a "great hit" sound if they're really lined up
  
      }
  }

• Template Strategy Software Design Pattern + AnimationCurves!
  I'll cover more about software design soon, but for user testing,
  you should set up a bunch of profiles and see what works best.
  The animation curves can be serialized in the editor, i.e.,
  they can be stored in a ScriptableObject and changed at runtime.
  Generalize your physics computation as a function delegate type,
  so that you can swap out different algorithms on the fly.
  The following is definitely for example purposes only.

  // define your delegate type
  delegate void CroquetPhysicsAlgorithm(
      Vector3 ballPosition,
      Vector3 ballVelocity,
      Vector3 ballAngularVelocity,
      Vector3 malletVelocity,
      Vector3 malletForward,
      ...
      AnimationCurve ballHitForceResponseCurve,
      AnimationCurve whateverElseCurve);
  
  ...
  
  // map from identifiers to functions to swap in and out
  Dictionary<string,CroquetPhyicsAlgorithm> algorithms = new[] {
      // fancy C#6 dictionary syntax, enable .NET 4.6 preview!
      ["MyAlgorithm"] = new CroquetPhysicsAlgorithm(MyAlgorithm),
      ["LambdaAlgorithm"] = (bP, bV, ...) => SomeOtherComputation(2*vB)*mV,
      ...
      ["LastTry"] = new CroquetPhysicsAlgorithm(LastTryVariationFinal2) };
  
  // current function to be called from physics
  CroquetPhysicsAlgorithm CurrentAlgorithm = MyDefaultAlgorithm;
  
  ...
  
  // calling the currently selected function
  void OnCollision(Collision o) {
      CurrentAlgorithm(ball.position, ball.velocity, ... CurrentForceCurve);
  }