[gameprogrammer] Re: Physics for games

Seriously, I haven't even thought about using Physx engine, because of the
50K pricetag for commercial use.  I mean, given the fact that most of us
indie developers don't have access to the physx adapter card yet, so true
hands on development testing, and getting it to work with some of the more
popular indie engines such as dark basic pro, which they even mentioned it
in one of their newsletters, and made it seem like you could only use it in
a commercial game given you purchase a license.  They stated that you could
use it for test work, and in their competition they had, but if you wanted
to use the adapted libraries / addon for dark basic pro in a commercial
work, even a shareware title, you would have to purchase a license from
Ageia, if not, your game would have to be limited to using the hardware
versions of the functions.  Also I was getting the same information from the
Torque newsletter also...  So I do believe there is a lot of
misunderstanding, and misinterpretation of the terms, and what we can, or
can not use it for / in.

I for one, would be up for attempting to use it in a major project I am
involved in, if I knew for sure, the license wasn't going to be biting me in
the end, when I went to try and distribute said game.  Lord knows, their
library would simplify at least the hardest part of my previous project,
where it is essential for buildings to crack, crumble and seem to fall apart
/ gib if you will upon collision with vehicles and / or certain weapons, or
explosive weapons.

I have tried to use several different physics libraries and find them all a
bit difficult to work with, always end up hitting a brick wall, pardon the
pun, meaning either in lack of documentation on how to do certain types of
FX, such as getting an object like a building formed from many different
model chunks, with bone type animation, to crumble and fall apart, more and
more, the more the vehicle hits said building.

I think what is missing for the most part in game development info for the
indie developer is examples, and better explanations in the form of
tutorials or documentation, explaining in an easy to read format, instead of
pretending the user, has a master in physics, and knows all the laws of
physics, and how to setup an object as either static or dynamic, and setting
all the required properties, like gravity, rebound, spring tension, etc..

Why can't someone just wrap one or more of these libraries, with simpler
functions, that say, like you load an object, say for instance a *.x model,
and have the function so that it auto calculates the mass, the min and max
sizes needed, and just give you a couple of options like either gravity true
or false, passed into the function, and tell it the starting location for
the object, and then stuff like slide or moveable true or false, and let it
take care of the more tedious stuff itself internally, this would make
creating the game much more simpler, just load all your *.x objects needed
for the game level to begin with, including the main character, npc's, all
the level objects, the terrain and / or plane objects, set their positions,
and the props I mentioned, and let the wrapper greatly simplify all the
dirty hard to understand stuff.

I'm sorry I rattled on and on for so long, but this game I have been working
on for about two years now, has seen many variations in many different
engines, and was even close to completion in 3D Game studio, but since I
only had the commercial edition, I had to try and use the newton engine for
physics, no small feat, so then I thought, maybe I could just make the
building in sections, connected via bones and joints, and then try to do all
the different animations needed for each hit, this sorta worked, except it
was hard to get a realistic looking building to fall apart in a realistic
manner, with the pieces shaped like chunks of concrete, and broken glass
shards, etc.. and then have the stuff disappear after a time period like
gibs, leaving behind money signs floating and rotating, I had some luck got
a single test level to work, with many buildings in it, but then ran into
issues with when you destroyed one building, other buildings began to go
through their kill sequences as well.

If anyone here, can help with an idea, or two, or even some example model,
or code to make this type of thing happen upon collision with a vehicle,
please, please email me directly at: comedy@xxxxxxxxxxx and I would be more
than willing to send any in game screen shots, and bounce ideas back and
forth.  I am also interested in not only which is the best physics engine,
but the easiest, stupid proof engine, to make it easier to create a physics
controlled game world, for us non-super math geeks, but old school game
developers used to moving objects normally around a level, or world.

Any tutorials, ideas, libraries, websites, whatever is more than welcome,
thanks soooo much for starting this topic.

Ken


-----Original Message-----
From: gameprogrammer-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:gameprogrammer-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Olofson
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 5:30 PM
To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [gameprogrammer] Re: Physics for games

On Friday 02 February 2007 21:36, Matthew Weigel wrote:
> David Olofson wrote:
> 
> > Either way, $50k doesn't exactly sound like free to me... I
> > suspect becoming a "licensed developer" involves substantial costs
> > as well, even by AAA title measures.
> 
> http://devsupport.ageia.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=378

[...totally different story...]

> From the same page, "Open-source usage is limited only to the most
> middleware-friendly license model."  Which is surprisingly
> enlightened, they don't mind if your use of the PhysX API is visible
> for all to see.

That sounds a lot better.

These guys might want to make the rest of the site to reflect the 
actual deal a bit more clearly, to avoid scaring people off before 
they even think about the fine print...


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

.-------  http://olofson.net - Games, SDL examples  -------.
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|       http://audiality.org - Music/audio engine          |
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'--  http://www.reologica.se - Rheology instrumentation  --'

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