You could use the law of conservation of energy if you want:

Ek = m*pow(v,2)
Ep= F*Height , F = m*a

E = Ek + Ep == constant

where m is a mass, v is the velocity, a is the gravity acceleration and at
any time E must be constant in a frictionless system. This way, you can
alway tell what should eb the speed at any point without simulating.

In practice, you may want to apply mechanics equation like this

v(n) = v(n-1) - at
pos(n) = pos(n-1) + vt + 0.5a*pow(t,2)

where t is the time step, a is the length of the horizontal component of the
gravity acceleration (cos A if A = 0 for horizontal plane) given the normal
of the surface.

If you dig in the vectorial aspect of Newtonian mechanics (High school level
I think), you should be able to solve your rolling problem by assigning a
matching vector component to the normal of the surface the particule is
rolling on in the first place.

Hope this helps, as well as the other posts sent while I was writing
this(...)

bongo

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