Making a hanging light, swing side to side....

OK, so I'm making a 2D platformer game and in a few rooms I have hanging strip lights à la...



The chains are separate sprites from the main body of the light, and separate from each other (the chains length can be adjusted with ease). Basically, I wanted to get the strip light, when the Player makes contact with it, to detach from the chain on one side, and just swing for a bit on the other chain until it naturally reaches a stop.

How I am to do this? I have no idea, so I thought I'd pick you guys and girls brains to see how you would do it?

 

Have you tried playing around with joints? This sounds like a perfect fit for a HingeJoint2D. Give the lamp object a Rigidbody2D, and optionally make its collider a trigger if you don't actually want physical interaction between it and the player.

Then set up triggers on the chains and rig them to disconnect the corresponding HingeJoint2D. This sohuld get you close to the effect you were looking for. You can set up more than one hinge for each chain link if you want, too.

 

Hey that's great man thanks. First time I've used the hinge joint, I love it. Is it going to add much size to the game file if I have this on several lights?

 

Not size, no; it will technically make scenes more difficult for CPU's to calculate, though. No idea of the extent, so you'll have to test for slowdown.