I plan on making this game for my Gr. 11 ISU.

[Reality Check]

http://addictinggames.com/hellofsandfallinggame.html

I know its a big project but I'd like to try. I've already went to the forums and make sure I won't be breaking the copyright of it or anything. I won't duplicate it exactly but I want to get as much of it as I can. I plan on using Eclipse to make it. Now, I'd like to know a couple things before I start:

1) I thought of ways to check for the interaction of the particles but I couldn't think of an efficient way. The only way I got was to make an object for each element and store each particle of an element in an array. I'd then continuously search through every particle and act accordingly when a particle touches another. Is there a more efficient way?

2) The other thing I haven't thought of yet is how I'm going get the particles to flow down the wall. Would I figure out the angle of the wall and act accordingly or is there a better way?

3) Finally, in the game, when you have a straight (90 degree) wall and dump some particles on it, it starts to create a pyramid effect much like it would in real life.

Once again, I haven't even started coding and just getting down some preliminary thoughts. Are there any suggestions for me?

[klopyrev]

Well, that game is just a simulation. Where a particle will move is affected directly by what's underneath it. You have a state, which is the condition of the board at a point in time. You have to continuously generate the next states. To implement a state, my first instinct is to refer to each grain by a grid coordinate. Then, you could store all the grains in the board in a HashSet and then generate a new HashSet from the previous one at each time. Basically, what this could do is given a hashset, you can generate the next state by iterating through it and for each of the particles, seeing where it could fall. Why a HashSet, you may ask... Well, for each particle, you have to know all of its neighbours to be able to figure out exactly where it will go. A HashSet makes it easy to check if a particle is on the board. As for implementing this is concerned - I suggest you try it out and if you get stuck, just ask me and I will be glad to help. As for the physics part of this, I don't have the time right now to figure out how it works, but I'll think about it.

[Reality Check]

I appreciate your help. I'll get started in about a week (too busy this week).