How to attach planes together and have fun doing it. news - Lift

Attaching planes together was one of the first really cool discoveries during the early days of developing Lift.

In terms of physics, when two (or 10) planes are attached together, they essentially combine into a single plane. The physics are calculated normally for all the components and applied to a single rigid body. Once the planes are detached, they then become their own plane and fly off as normal.

The one area where they don't act as one plane is in their controls. You can still switch between each individual plane and operate their controls separately while they are attached together.

Attachments can be detached with a button press and respawned and reattached with another button press.

Now with a basic understanding, let's look at the system in action.

The first is the Handley Page HP42 strapped on the back of the Hughes H-4 Hercules.

Oops.

Next, a demonstration of creating an attachment on command. Our cylindrical "pilot" ejects right before hitting the ground and opens his parachute.

The parachute attachment is technically a plane but it is simply made up of 5 wing components to form a parachute shape.

Let's look at a more traditional example. Missiles!

While those creations are fun, they don't serve much practical purpose in the game, at least not yet. A more useful scenario comes when we look at the challenges in the game.

Here is an example of trying to use the Wright Flyer to complete the Ring Leader challenge.

Using my expert flying skills I did manage to get it off the ground, but there is no way I could avoid the obstacles ahead. I should note that the challenge here is not to get past this obstacle, but to fly through the dozen rings following it.

With a little ingenuity, I created a simple motorized cart to strap this Wright Flyer to, in order to give it a little more speed on the runway.

Once I reach the end of the runway I just detach from the cart and off I go. Unfortunately I forgot how to fly after that.

Here is an example showing how to complete the Mount the Sky Whale challenge with a glider. Same concept as above, strap it to the cart for speed on the runway and then detach.

Even with the currently limited gameplay in Lift, the attachment system can really allow for some funny moments and creative thinking and problem solving. The plan is to continue improving the system in terms of usability and function and hopefully get it a little more tightly integrated into the gameplay.

Thanks for reading! Or most likely just watching the pretty pictures.

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