Teaching embers to be stupid
Our first ember simulation was clever. Nobody liked it.
Lanternfall is a game about keeping a light alive, so embers matter more than anything else on screen. Version one used a proper little fluid solver. It looked lovely and played terribly, because players could not guess where an ember was going.
Version two is embarrassing: each ember has a direction, a wobble, and a bad memory. It takes about forty lines of code. Players now catch embers on purpose, and misses feel like their own fault.
The small toy on our front page uses the same idea. Have a go at it and tell us how far you get.