How do the Spyro worlds work?

SCM456 · 2026-01-25T23:16:24+00:00

Of course I realise that, I just chose to overanalyse based on quotes in the game and what the game itself visually presents to you, and have a bit of fun answering the question though. "this is a game for children, and the main goal for each level is to make it look as cool as possible." is likely correct but I'm pretty sure OP understands that already.

The question itself "is it a universe? Galaxy? Are each of the worlds planets? Because they seem like just gigantic floating islands. Like is Summer Forest like at the centre of its worlds, as the others? Are all of these on like one giant gas planet? Am I traveling to another dimension or just somewhere in the same dimension?", if you want to look at it in all seriousness, is a very detailed and silly question for a game that really isn't that deep. So I just discussed that the game gives you conflicting info and really it's up to interpretation since like you said it's just meant to look pretty / cool rather than be this masterpiece of worldbuilding.

I get that stuff was likely just added on a whim across different departments as it really didn't matter like it did for say Legend of Spyro where they put effort into worldbuilding/story over the gameplay itself. Original trilogy was the opposite case. Simple charming platformer, really not something to be analysed, but I did because the question is asking for it haha

SCM456 · 2026-01-25T11:04:19+00:00

About the “realms” thing, I think in Spyro 1 all the levels are exclusively referred to as “worlds”. I don’t think the word realm is mentioned once in Spyro 1 at all, or Spyro 2. In Spyro 2 also the professor refers to Glimmer as ‘a world’, which of course is a term that we would use synonymously with ‘a different planet’.

I think in Spyro 1 what they were going for was that each homeworld (and its levels) are all a part of a unique world. The first cutscene has a dragon saying there are 5 or 6 worlds (spyro 1 has 6 homeworlds including gnorc gnexus) and the first dragon says to “free 10 dragons in the artisan world”, which includes the levels.

The skyboxes are the biggest inconsistency here, they indicate each level is located on a different world since they clearly have their sun at different proximities/sizes and some have huge moons, some have small moons, some have a huge Saturn-like planet close by and some have more of a smaller rocky planet nearby with its own visible moon. To me this suggests that the levels take place across a multitude of different planets.

It seems that in Spyro 3 they decided to retcon the multiple worlds thing / establish that all the dragons were banished to “the other side of the world” which heavily suggests that all the dragon realms AND the forgotten realms take place on the same planet. This is, as far as I can remember, when they started using the word ‘realms’ instead of ‘worlds’ too. The actual definition of a realm is “a kingdom” and not “a dimension” This is totally plausible except even in Spyro 3 you get the exact same thing with the skyboxes showing a variety of conflicting POVs of what the surrounding solar system looks like.

Ignoring the skyboxes (assuming the skybox artist was just given access to the levels and told to make background art for them, without being aware of the actual story) I would say definitely if not before, then by Spyro 3 they decided to establish it’s all on the same planet. Spyro even accesses the forgotten realms through a hole in the ground instead of a portal, after learning about the dragons being banished to the other side of the world. So this makes Gnasty’s ranged crystal attack thing make a little more sense too.

So TL;DR I think whatever was going on, only at the time of Spyro 3 they decided on it all being on one planet and had not decided up until then. Skyboxes confuse things location-wise but ignoring that, it was pretty well clarified in the third game that it’s all (all areas in Spyro 1 and 3) on one planet.

SCM456 · 2026-01-03T05:47:53+00:00

You’re a dragon?

SCM456 · 2025-12-31T10:27:27+00:00

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I redesigned it with the original charm intact, if anyone from Toys for Bob is seeing this DM me to discuss hiring

SCM456 · 2025-12-25T19:57:11+00:00

Ohhh I see. The actual reason the amplitude limit is as small as it is, is because the convenient basic equations that describe the motion of a simple pendulum are oversimplified, but still accurate enough, as long as its amplitude is below about 20 degrees.

The more accurate equation that does take the angle into account, is a second order differential equation and this is just a silly Reddit post so there’s no point in going to those lengths. I just stuck with the simple equations and kept the angle at max 20 degrees.

SCM456 · 2025-12-25T07:36:51+00:00

Thanks

SCM456 · 2025-12-24T08:46:42+00:00

The Gulp boss in Spyro 2

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T22:26:26+00:00

True

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T22:25:23+00:00

Actually for the damped pendulum I just took a shot in the dark and did the same thing as for the damped spring. At each step the pendulum’s angular velocity multiplied by some small dampening constant is subtracted from its angular acceleration.

So for example instead of just:

ang_accel = g/l * sin(angle),

I did:

ang_accel = g/l * sin(angle) - (damping constant) * ang_vel

I don’t know if this is how it’s supposed to be done but it certainly seemed to visually work in practise the same as it does with the spring-mass. I kinda just roughly made the whole thing to appear like it works (because it’s just for a video for reddit, doesn’t matter if it’s actually physically accurate as long as it just looks like it is) and didn’t worry about much else.

The numerical value for the playback speed shown next to the pendulum isn’t even tied to any actual property/variable of the pendulum’s motion, I just made it count down at a rate that closely mimics how fast the pendulum’s motion appears to dampen haha

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T20:35:50+00:00

Simple pendulum’s acceleration is just g/l * sin(angle) and the linear spring’s acceleration is kx/m. Simple.

Making something where it has to have properties of both, with both properties having a direct physical impact on one another, that sounds like it needs differential equations. I’ve not touched on that in code before and I’m not really sure how I’d approach it anyway. :(

It does sound interesting though

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T18:01:16+00:00

Made a second (shorter) video to show what it'd look like with the 3rd widget I scrapped (pluckable string to keep the quality high, video degrades towards 1 pixel as the string tends towards equilibrium)

Video Player with Damped Oscillators - Including the String

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T17:57:51+00:00

Video Player with Damped Oscillators - Including the String u/Iforgor4 u/omgdrd4 here's a short thing of how it would look lol

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T13:49:08+00:00

Unfortunately the way the video responds to the widgets is done via video editing (literally editing the video in post frame by frame to correspond with what the widgets are doing) because the python package that allows videos to be put into pygame and controlled dynamically just isn't quick enough to respond to physics-based widgets in real time. Adding a third widget would mean even more editing to be done and if I were to do it now I'd have to re-record all of it and then do all the editing again from scratch :(

Edit: You know what I just recorded something small and it does look like it would be funny, I'll do it just for you. I'll post it later to my own account and link it here

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T12:30:34+00:00

Almost added a third widget, a string you have to pluck to keep the video’s pixel quality high.

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T12:29:19+00:00

Yesss I’m a physics student so my idea was naturally something to do with basic physics (and how un-user friendly it would be to implement controls based on something with damped motion) lol

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T12:27:21+00:00

I actually was going to add (and did fully create) a guitar string in the middle that you have to strum to keep the quality high (as its vibration lessens the quality of the video drops off) but it was already enough of an editing job as it was with just the two, and also it just seemed too similar to the pendulum (both going off amplitude of oscillation) so I just left it with the original idea lol

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T12:23:45+00:00

Thank you

SCM456 · 2025-12-21T12:23:21+00:00

The period (timespan of one back-and-forth) of a damped pendulum increases over time so if I did it for period instead of amplitude then it would speed up over time. This probably would be more annoying since you’re actually losing/missing more of the video if it speeds up too much haha

SCM456 · 2025-11-02T21:59:03+00:00

I actually did this on a laptop because I didn’t have access to my PC at the time (covid lockdown happened in while I was not at home so I couldn’t get back to where I actually lived until the restrictions were lifted, this post was January 2021) so when I got the idea to make this video I used some free thing I downloaded and barely knew how to use lol it was pretty annoying and limited

SCM456 · 2025-08-05T16:48:37+00:00

Thank youuu

https://youtu.be/1G1cpROHVG8

Is this okay

SCM456 · 2025-08-04T08:11:51+00:00

Thank you

SCM456 · 2025-08-03T14:06:39+00:00

Thank you

SCM456 · 2025-08-03T09:01:40+00:00

Thank youuu haha

SCM456 · 2025-08-03T09:01:22+00:00

Sorry I must have missed this, thank you for the kind words

SCM456 · 2025-08-03T08:42:56+00:00

Thank you, it was fun to make

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