Just because I’m too ignorant to enjoy Graphwar II (£4) and its free predecessor doesn’t mean I’m not going to cover them on Tally-Ho Corner. I suspect there are a few Cornerites out there with sufficient maths skills to understand this tutorial and others who will be able to start sniping without any prior instruction whatsoever.
It’s a shame Catacorp didn’t include an idiot-proof interactive tutorial for those of us whose mathematical education was rudimentary and long ago. Attempting to pot-shot foes with projectiles guided by maths functions looks rather fun.
Watching Graphwar vids set me wondering: ‘Has anyone ever built a golf game around a similar play mechanic?’ It appears the answer is ‘no’. Obviously, if ball flights in the game were to resemble ball flights in the actual sport, there’d need to be limits on the types of functions you could type. And as golf is played in 3D environments rather than 2D ones, each stroke would require two equations not one.
Maybe the mechanic work work in other contexts too. For example, it doesn’t take much effort to picture an aerobatics game in which your ‘projectiles’ are individual aircraft, and the goal is reproducing a series of increasingly complex display manoeuvres as accurately as possible. Blue Angels Angles, anyone?
The Red Arrows, being loopy froods, would probably be better served by Polar Coordinates. However, I think polar curves are attractive enough on their own and don’t need an aerobatic plane overlay. I doubt my brain is mathematically limber enough any more to handle 3 dimensional polar graphing.
{Unlike your usual Cartesian coordinates (distance x and distance y), polar coordinates use an angle (probably theta) and a distance}
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I don’t think I’ve played a golf or pool game since the DOS days. Certainly in pool you could choose where on the ball to make contact, to control spin. I suspect nigh all players are going to prefer GUI-based input on how they impact the ball rather than mathematical precision of impetus imparted.