[Odejava] A Tank - how to? (William?!?)

Game Mechanics
#1

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

#2

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 :-[

#3

You could look at the Car class in the test package.

It uses JointHinge2 for the tyres. And its probably what you are looking for. Except for the wheel chain thing ofcourse, your going to need many hinges (type JointHinge) for that…

Good luck, i can’t wait to see what u have made!

DP

#4

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