MAMEWorld Forums - Programming

> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4111/dirty_coding_tricks.php

Don't know how many remember Force 21, but it was an early 3D RTS which used a follow cam to observe your current platoon. Towards the end of the project we had a strange bug where the camera would stop following the platoon -- it would just stay where it was while your platoon moved on and nothing would budge it. The apparent cause was random because we couldn't find a decent repro case. Until, finally, one of the testers noticed that it happened more often when an air strike occurred near your vehicles. Using that info I was able to track it down.

Because the camera was using velocity and acceleration and was collidable, I derived it from our PhysicalObject class, which had those characteristics. It also had another characteristic: PhysicalObjects could take damage. The air strikes did enough damage in a large enough radius that they were quite literally "killing" the camera.

I did fix the bug by ensuring that cameras couldn't take damage, but just to be sure, I boosted their armor and hit points to ridiculous levels. I believe I can safely say we had the toughest camera in any game.

S