Re: [pygame] Collision handling algorithm

[Kris Schnee <kschnee@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I can't find the article right now, but there's an interesting interview 
online regarding "Deus Ex," "Morrowind," "System Shock," and emergent 
behavior in video games. The point of it is, you seem to be on the right 
track by giving generic traits to events like explosions and laser 
blasts, letting objects access each others' data instead of having every 
type of collision hard-coded. If an exploion is only coded as "hurt the 
player if they're nearby," that works, but if it's coded instead as 
"create an Explosion object that damages anything nearby," you can get 
cool, surprising gameplay like players trying to get enemies to clump 
together before destroying one, creating a chain-reaction of 
destruction. It's like a collectible card game: if you divide cards into 
general categories with rules like "Affects anything made of glass," you 
can easily add new content and have it automatically work with existing 
content.

Kris