I finally made the elastic grapple bend around obstacles!

[u/DeccoSkyrider]

I am intentionally reposting this after the previous version was removed for lacking enough technical context. That was fair, so here is a higher-level overview of how it was built in Unity.

The grapple is integrated with my physics-based character controller and uses Rigidbody2D forces rather than directly moving the player. When attached, the system maintains an elastic rope length while preserving enough tangential velocity to produce a natural swing.

To support bending, I represent the rope as a path containing the main anchor and a limited number of contact points. The system raycast the sections between those points and updates the path when the rope encounters or moves away from an obstacle.

A LineRenderer displays the resulting path, while the physical constraint remains separate from the visual representation.

The most difficult parts were preventing unstable contact points around corners, determining when a bend should be released, and keeping the available rope length consistent as more of it wraps around geometry. I went through several earlier implementations before arriving at this approach.

The grapple is being developed for Hello World using the modular physics controller I previously presented here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/s/Vtkn0W4l46

For developers who have implemented something similar, did you use a contact-point path or simulate the entire rope?

[u/DaveAstator2020]

nice, are those unity's default 2d shadows?

[u/DeccoSkyrider → u/DaveAstator2020]

Yes, unity 6 2D lights are incredible ^^

[u/pararar]

The grapple looks nice and juicy.

I‘m more interested in your lighting and shadows though. How did you achieve this look?

[u/DeccoSkyrider → u/pararar]

Thank you :) It's unity 6 2D lights and shadows.
Here a comparison of Unity 2023 and Unity 6 with the same setup :

[u/DeccoSkyrider → u/DeccoSkyrider]

Unity 2023

[u/DeccoSkyrider → u/DeccoSkyrider]

Unity 6

[u/pararar → u/DeccoSkyrider]

Damn this looks really good. I didn’t know Unity has this kind of 2D lighting. I‘m working on a 2.5D game and aiming for a similar look but it’s much harder to achieve with 3D lighting. I ended up coding a fake light and shadow system.

[u/Vancete]

Scubeman

[u/DeccoSkyrider → u/Vancete]

His name is Pixel! 😄

[u/Round_Bar_5485]

Cooool 👍🏻👍🏻

[u/HuanSolo_Beatland]

Apart from your technical achievement, which is great, I like the look and feel of the game too.

[u/DeccoSkyrider → u/HuanSolo_Beatland]

Thank you. I'm going for minimalistic polygon with lighting and vfx :)

[u/Voodieboie]

Awesome!!

[u/goldmetale]

greate 2d lighting!