Looks (feels!) really cool!

Would it be hard to introduce a third but limited dimension?:
Rotations can only occur as now - around one axis (the "height" axis, if you consider the current view as top-down)
Geoms can only have "height" (apart from what they have now) so that circle would become a standing cylinder (ie aligned to the "height" axis)
Some more math for sure, but would it be "fairly easy" or "a total rethink of everything"?

This sort-of-3d would come in handy for a isometric style games (not necessarily isometric, but for that kind of view)

/M

I tend to use not duplicate methods, but pass-return types like:

public Vector3f getWhatever(Vector3f dest, ...) {
  if (dest == null) {
    dest = new Vector3f;
  }
  ...
  return dest;
}

I really like it - especially the title screen(!) Really nice old-school feel to it, but please - work a bit more on that music score (make it longer!) and keep it in demo play.

However, I would like the chopper to be more responsive, and everything a bit faster. If this is done, a lot more enemies can be put in so there is more action. Also, make some "swing-door" type obstacles etc!

/M

Maybe you should throw in a little something about the separation of logic and rendering, and get a bit into the concepts of "network-enabled game design", since "the kids" of today take online gaming for granted.

/M

It's kind a hard in the beginning (first 50 years?) to *know* where the stuff ends up in ODE, if you put the things together correctly etc etc, so I just started on a simple class the takes an ODE World and renders all bodies in it (simplified, with no optimizations what so ever, using LWJGL atm). Should I try to make those 50 lines of code public? (Or, perhaps more importantly - is there already code that does this?) At least, I would have spared a few hours getting that code from the community...
But the issue at hand - having the opportunity to get both the "world position" (transformed) and the parents postition/relative postion/... feels nice, all needed is just a clarification of the API -  like getWorldPosition will *always* give you world position - no fuss, while getPosition will give whatever the ODE docs states!?!

On a GeomTransform:
getPostition(float[] dst) gives the "parent Bodys" postition
getPosition(Vector3f dst) gives the transformed position.
Is this "by design - not just yet documented" or a bug? According to ODE docs, dGeomGetPosition returns the bodys postition. Which one is the most "future-proof"?

/M

First I'll try the lazy aproach - Just have a series of "wheels", like 4 of 'em on each side of a box, and not let them steer (no rotation of Axis 1 of Hinge-2). Hopefully, i'll be able to turn using forward/brake/backward on the wheel-series respectively.
Simulating the actual wheel chains seems like it will be too big a problem (for me, at least).

/M

The Art of Feeling Stupid - A google for Tank and ODE gave me a whole bunch if links - I'll start there, before a ask around again

/M - Feeling Stupid

I tried to fiddle with ODE some time ago, trying to make a top-down view car racing game, but I *never* got a good feel into it. But this time I'm going for tanks (and not a racing game  ), but how should I simulate the movement? Just applying a force in the direction of the tank (given it toches the ground?) might feel weird - and I get the feeling you have already thought about this for a bit, and I couldn't find anything in the ODE mailing list (not a member, so I couldn't search the whole archive), so a kick in my rear region in the right direction would really be helpful...

/M

I think there is a way to extend the Voxel algo to enable looking up/down...

[googling...]

Yep! Here it is:
http://jcosmos.free.fr/galerie/olivevoxel/olivevoxel.htm

Too bad the keys are too fast...

/Micke

I think there were some words about it in http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=Tuning;action=display;num=1076185882;start=23

/M

I have been using Paint Shop Pro trials, but aren't there any freeware alternatives? Most of the time you can find freewares that are 'almost' what you need - does anybody know if this is the case with pixel pushing?

/Micke

Looks like I'm not the only one monitoring this thread eagerly awaiting something to get my dirty hands on... ANY progress on ANY bindings or physicsengine a la ODE would be greatly appreciated  

/Micke

Thank you for the reply! I will definitly try a similar approach and pray it looks *nothing* like what I have today...  

/M

Mojo: Is that what you use in your engine? I just feel very reluctant to implement it since I want decent performance on low-end cards, but perhaps it is the price I'll have to pay to make it look nice...

/M

Sure it can! (Not falling for this lame attempt to have a laugh - inte en chans   ).

/M

Just a quick question...    How the [any bad word] do you get the terrain tile textures to look so [another bad word] good? Smooth transitions and big nice patterns in the textures (especially the rocky stuff) etc etc... (I could post a screenshot of my own terrain, but becoming the laughing stock of the entire comunity is not on my TODO-list today)

/M

If I was an administrator, I would just remove this thread.

/M

Well... Considering it crammed up a decent FPS on Halflife, it *should* be able to push this a bit better I guess...
/M

morebrackeen:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/relnotes.html#hotspot, says somehing about "-XX:UseSSE=0". Looks like what you were looking for.

/M

Lucky me! I *still* get the NPE! (on a PIII/XP/G400)

/M

The zip-file is corrupt yada yada (downloaded it some seven times, tried with WinZip, WinRar) But it seems to work for Andrew?!? Can it be my aNTi-vIRUs? Usually not the case...  

/M

I too get the


with the jar-version (and the NPE ofcourse with the exe)

/M

I think I'll just wait for 0.5.1 (Since I'm not the one having the problem ;-). And I wasn't very clear about the freezes - they're of the kind "I wouldn't know my computer was on if it wasn't for the noise and the power led". And yes, the Matrox drivers seem to be somewhere between totally useless and quite bad.

/M

Matzon; I guess the fixes you made aren't in the 0.5 release? So in order for me to get them (I'm as lazy as they come) I'll need to download some files specifically and recompile? (I know jack-shyt about CVS, apart from being this lazy) My co-developer's computer (W2K, Matrox G200) freezes every now and then when he's LWJGLing, and I figured this fix just might easy some of his rear entry pains... So! What do I do to get the latest?

/M

I had a mind to do a multiplayer Marble Madness for a while - but realized that I would probably be the only one who would enjoy playing it (sort of takes cream out of mulitplayer, doesn't it)... But I really do like the idea - Spindizzy/Marble Madness/Gyroscope X/Any other half-clone you can of would be fun in da network

/M

You didn't by any chance add the lwjgl.jar to the exensions in JDK1.4.0 so it finds it whatever you do to the classpath, but not in 1.4.1  (The classpath, by the way, seems to be missing in you description of what you do to make it work)

/M

Could it be the normalization; I get the feeling something should get divided by 'magnitude' in there...?

/M

Or, you can just be a bad boy and get the DataBuffer from it, and get the approriate arraytype ( int[] from DataBufferInt etc), and fiddle along at your leasure.
Like:

BufferedImage bi = frame.getGraphicsConfiguration().createCompatibleImage(xs, ys, Transparency.OPAQUE);
WritableRaster wr = bi.getRaster();
DataBufferInt db = (DataBufferInt)wr.getDataBuffer();
int[] pixels = db.getData();

Ofcourse, you should check the type of the DataBuffer, check the ColorModel to see how the data is stored etc etc.

The "ProjectedTextures.exe" works fine in 16-bit and 32-bit mode, very slow in 24-bit. And I get the same problem as whome with TerrainGL (not running in 16-bit and 32-bit, running a slow as possible on 24-bit)

Intresting? Didn't think so ;-)

/M