Devlog 4: Getting to a working version

Like mentioned in my last Devlog, one thing I had to do was adding interaction based on color and distance, and hurray! I did both!
So I did it by having an array of floats, which contains the attraction matrix, but flattend, and did the same for the distance values, basically like this:
array[i + j * width] = matrix[i][j]
I also made a function that based on a minRange and maxRange around a particle calculates it’s attraction to other particles, if it’s closer than minRange, it gets pushed away, otherwise if it’s closer than maxRange, it gets attracted or repelled based on the attraction matrix.
I made it so instead of using Time.deltaTime it now uses a fixed value that you can change, and added friction, so the particles, making the particles alot more stable than they’d be otherwise.

So now, I’d have a usable version of Particle Life, but as you can see my To-Do list isn’t quite finished yet.
To-Do:

• Add interaction based on color and distance.
• Optimize and Improve calculations.
• Add an GUI / Interface

Devlog 3: Implemented some stuff

In Devlog 2 I wrote down what I planned to do next, and now I’ve done it.
I added an adjustable border that when crossed moves the particles back inside, and makes them bounce of by inverting their velocity, but dampening it a bit.
Then I made it so whenever you start, it arranges the amount of particles you choose in a grid, in the middle of the border, with adjustable spacing between the particles.
Then I made it so you can chose however many colors you want, and the colors will be equaly distributed to all the particles. I did this by basically doing this:
particleColor[i] = colorList[i % colorList.length]
Where the colorList[] is made up from the colors you input in the inspector.

To-Do:

• Add interaction based on color and distance.
• Optimize and Improve calculations.
• Add an GUI / Interface

Devlog 2: Changing my approach

I have now decided to not have each particle be a GameObject, but instead handle all of them from 1 Script that stores each particles position and velocity, to then calculate interactions and draw them. Right now I’m doing the drawing using Graphics.RenderMesh() for each individual particle, and I can already have them be attracted or repelled by each other.

What I plan on doing next:

• Add a border, so the particles don’t escape.
• Make it so the particles starting positions are spread out.
• Add the possibility for particles to have different colors.

Devlog 1: Starting my Project

So first I had to set up my Unity project, link it to a GitHub repo, and then installed HackaTime to track the time I work in Unity.
So I wanna create something based on Particle Life, but with a few changes and twists.
So up until now, I have already made a Script that gets all colliders in a certain range around the GameObject it’s attached to, by using Physics2D.OverlapCircleAll(), and then calculates and applies a certain force into the direction of that other Collider, by using RigidBody2D.AddForce().
But right now, they still act the same towards all other particles, not just those of the same color.
And now, I have also come to the conclusion that I will have to think about whether I wanna do this Project using the GPU for the calculations, or not, because I’ve realized that only using the CPU might not have the greatest performance, but the way I’m currently doing stuff, probably won’t work for a compute shader.