GeomCylinder help

[gafferuk]

When i create a GeomCylinder in odejava it crashes throwing out errors which i havent got on me at this time. I can't create one in the car example or any other.

Is GeomCylinder fully working or have i made an error?

[William Denniss]

GeomCylinder is not working.

This is more a limitation of ODE than Odejava - it is still only a contrib module.  This means it isn't supported as well and is a bit of a pain to add to the build script (there was an effort to automate the process with a patch but apparently it was very complicated).

Use Spheres - they work.

Will.

[gafferuk]

I'm building a TenPin Bowling game, problem with using spheres, the pins would fall/roll over, guess i'll have to try a new game.

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[William Denniss]

why not use boxes?

Will.

[William Denniss]

or, a sphere with a small box base (using a GeomTransform) so it stays upright but rolls when hit.

Will.

[gafferuk]

Yes, i was thinking about using a box base and collide them only with the alley floor.  Thanks for your input.

[gafferuk]

Problem with using a box base is the pin would only fall one of 4 ways. Could use several boxes overlaping each other and rotated but then gets silly. would require 90 boxes to cover the full 360 deg. Unless ode gets cylinder support this project is dead.

[darkprophet]

yeah, i need it too for my jME-ODE binding please.

Thx

[William Denniss]

the deal is this:

Cylinder is not an official ODE geom, it's a contributed module.

Currently doing a full native upgrade and build of Odejava on all three supported platforms is quite time consuming.  For this reason, I don't want to make the process any less automated than it is.

When I do a native build - I remove the odejava/compile/ode directory and copy fresh ODE sources in.  If you can modify the build so that the cylinder module is a patch that can automatically be applied to those ode sources then I am happy to include it.

A patch does exist for this cylinder code, and t_larkworthy had a crack at getting it to work but found that the patch was incomplete.  He emailed the ODE mailing list regarding this but go no response.

If you can get the patch working (and are prepared to maintain it in the future) or can petition the ODE guys to properly maintain it (or even integrate it into the core which would be ideal) then we are in business.

NOTE:  If you are looking into this, use the "dCylinder2" contrib, it is apparently better than the original "dCylinder"

Will.

[gafferuk]

Thanks Will for your input.
Can anyone tell us why ode is so limited by its range of simple geometry? Got great ideas for games.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[William Denniss]

You're welcome.

I believe there is some resistance to adding new geometry types as it slows down the collision detection.

I suggest emailing to the ODE mailing list regarding possible integration of the Cylinder code into the core if you want it.  I'll second it if you do.  Even a working patch would be enough.

Will.