Hi, the thing I have noticed and haven't seen anyone complain about or at least mention it, is the spin availability when the cue ball is next to the cushion.
Unlike in real life, here you can choose any spin you want, when the cue ball is next to the cushion(unrealistic).
I thought it would be a good addition to the game if that feature is implemented.

Its been brought up quite alot.. There was quite a few problems i think to why it cant be implemented.. i could be wrong tho..

http://www.funkysnooker.com/findTopic.do?forumid=2&searchString=spin+on+cushion

It was implemented on the mobile phone version so could be movable if nick really wanted to but you can use backspin on cushions (just not direct backspin when tight on cushion) so its as realistic as it can be

I've said it on every thread on this, but when the ball is on the cushion then the spin you can use depends on the direction in which you are playing the cue ball. If you are playing along the cushion then you can hit the bottom of the ball without any changes, but you cant hit the left/right hand side of the ball. In order for this to work you would need the parts of the cue ball you can hit to change as you rotated the cue round, which would be difficult to do I imagine.

tbh the game is hard enough without adding spin on cushion shots. i can hardly hit a ball in the pocket since i changed laptops. A no from me

Which would need a 3d engine, and would have running problems on some peoples machines I believe.

Not that difficult.

Why would it need a 3D engine?

The easiest way to do would to leave the user select what spin he wished to use. (i.e don't restrict any spin options) but if the white ball was touching cushion and the user took a shot away from the cushion then the spin modifier should be reduced so that anyspin applied below the cue ball basically became irrelavnt, but if the user shoots his cue ball along the cushion the modifier shouldn't be affected.

It would cut out a lot of work on terms of changing the spin as the cue rotates.

User should apply spin accordingly. Would work well and I'm sure determining the direction of the cue ball is easy enough to obtain.

Anyway, its just something else that will never happen. Don't understand why we actually have a suggestion area tbh.

You're right that would be the easiest way. If the spin was restricted as the cue moved around, there would have to be a way of implementing the spin after you've decided upon the angle of your cue, which isn't a good idea.

If that idea of lfc_lad's was achievable, would it be possible to extend it to reduce spin options when playing over the top of another ball?

That would be a lot harder.
With cushions, you only have to detect whether the cue ball is next to a cushion, and if so, which cushion. As cushions are straight it's pretty easy to do the calculations for the spin.
If you include other balls aswell, you'd have to track the locations of all balls on the table in relation to the cue ball.
I mean it's definitely possible, but it probably wouldn't be that realistic and it would be difficult to code.

On the other hand, I have no idea how Nick has structured the code, so it could be very easy to do, or even impossible to do without changing a lot of the fundamentals of the game. So only Nick can give a real answer.

I guess if it did store the location of the balls it would be possible to implement the touching ball thing easily. As it hasn't been done, I'm guessing the location isnt stored...

I'm pretty sure the location of the balls won't be very difficult to find out.

I thought so too. Hmm.

I mean there must be co-ordinates of some sort in order for the game to work.. Knowing where the colours spots are, and knowing when a ball rolls into a pocket. Also, in order for the cue to pivot around the cue ball, it'd need to know what the location of the cue ball was.

Because it would have to take account of the vertical angle of the cue, a "dimension" not used as yet.

Obviously that also mean it needs to be set for each shot etc which would impact on playability.

This is one of a few things (like chalking the cue, nap effect etc) regularly brought up that I personally would like to see, but only in a "simulation" table, not on the existing ones.

Explain why you'd have to take the vertical angle into account. Sorry but that makes no sense to me.

Because that is what decides how much of the cue ball you can strike, and how it behaves. Current physics assumes the cue ball will always be being struck by a horizontal cue.