Matematica din spatele jocului Angry Birds

   Pentru multi Angry Birds pare doar un joc simplu si incantator insa in spatele sau se ascunde o cu totul alta lume pe care multi nu o vor intelege. Functionalitatea jocului se rezuma la doua lucruri: trasul unei pasari intr-o prastie si apasarea pe ecran la momentul potrivit pentru ca acea pasare sa indeplineasca o functie si sa distruga niste elemente fizice/porci. Ei bine in spatele acestor aparente simple miscari se ascund calcule matematice, complexe care de indata ce sunt stapanite de un utilizator permit acestuia sa termine foarte simplu si usor orice nivel al jocului.

When I first started playing Angry Birds oh so many years ago, I had this feeling that after tapping the screen the yellow bird just went at a constant velocity. Then one day, I accidentally shot it super high. The bird didn’t just keep going up, it looked like some parabolic motion. I guess I was wrong. What next? Collect some data.

   Cei de la Wired au analizat in detaliu modul in care functioneaza jocul Angry Birds si modul in care inginerii companiei au gandit tot ceea ce misca in environment-ul jocului. Totul se rezuma la calcule matematice, care propulseaza pasarile cu o anumita viteza cand apasam pe ecran si le fac sa coboare la un anumit unghi peste elementele fizice disponibile in fiecare nivel. Mai multe informatii detaliate gasiti pe site-ul celor de la Wired.

Just to check, let me make a plot of the magnitude of the velocity right before the tap vs. the acceleration during the tap. Oh, it looks like all of the shots have the yellow bird accelerating (due to the tap) for 0.067 seconds. Of course this acceleration could just be due to the screen capture frame rate. It doesn’t look like there is a simple relationship here. It also doesn’t look like the tap-acceleration is constant. The magnitude of this acceleration ranged from 124 m/s² to 336 m/s².

Oh, you don’t like all the graphs and equations? You just want the scoop? Ok — here it is: It appears that when you tap the angry yellow bird, two things can happen. First, it increases its speed to 30 m/s (in the same direction that it was going). Second, if its velocity is greater than 20°; below the horizontal the vertical acceleration will be lower than 9.8 m/s².