Thank you so much we're really proud of how it turned out especially in the short timeframe of working on it, and really do want to flesh it out into a much more full game.
Im personally proud of the physics myself and want to know in what way you think it could be improved! Any advice on feeling matters to me since I want to polish it out to feel as good as possible.
For me, the momentum for the ball feels wrong. The wooden parts of a bowling lane are specifically designed to eat as little momentum as possible. I think it would be more interesting if you used a variety of terrains, and kept lane style wood such that it doesn’t eat momentum, and maybe use minigolf grass as a higher friction surface. The momentum fall off of the wooden material in the current prototype feels difficult to predict, because that’s not how bowling actually works. Using other terrain/obstacles to provide things to chip its momentum would help immensely.
Additionally, the spin feels really hard to predict. I think you might do well to take a page out of Wii Bowling’s book and use a guide line to show a preview line that shows the curve provided by the spin. Right now when i add spin to the ball it’s really hard to figure out how far forward the ball will go before it turns, and how hard of a turn it will make, which doesn’t feel good.
Also, i really dislike the use of bouncy materials. I could see them being used in small amounts, but a bowling ball should feel really heavy/difficult to shift momentum on. Having things like bouncy walls and pinball bouncers that can 180 the ball and spring it into the air etc makes the ball feel less weighty than it is. Plus, the bouncy walls seem to be the only sort of wall you really used, which makes the game feel much more slippery to control than i would expect from a bowling ball. Honestly, using bouncy materials occasionally might be fine if you balanced it out a bit. Not sure there
One last thought: try exploring having the ball get thrown at the beginning of each “hit” like it would if someone were actually bowling. That might let you explore some interesting shortcuts with lofting etc. might not work out, but worth considering I think
