Rapid physics prototyping

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Another month, another crazy idea - this time for a toybox style game with a physics focus ('cos I havn’t done anything with proper physics). But being snowed under with lots of stuff I’d like to do something as quick as possible to test the idea and see if its actually fun.

Basically all I need is a ‘proper’ physics library and some method of rendering the result. Physics only has to do some basic primitives (mostly boxes and prisms, maybe some spheres and wheels), and rendering can be as simple as just flat shaded polys.

Anyone any recommendations? ODE would seem to be the obvious choice, but what about drawing? Xith3D and JMe both appear to have some ODE intergration, but which is more suitable I don’t know. I’m just after the fastest, easiest way to chuck a few boxes around on the screen.

Having not used either of them, I’m tempted to go with Xith as I’ve used Java3d so it should be slightly familiar. But then again, I hated the Java3d API…

#2

Xith has some kind of collision detection, but I’m not sure if it works. Most xith users use odejava anyways. For the combination of xith and odejava there are some useful tools already existing.

I don’t know JMe very much, but I think it has it’s own version of odejava implemented.

#3

Jme’s physics stuff is a higher level of abstraction than odejava.

the creation of GeomTriMesh for terrain/static is automatic, creation of compounded objects of any kind (either static or dynamic) is also automatic.

Different gravity modes are available. E.g. point gravity (think black hole), normal gravity (earth), and planet gravity (simulates gravity between planets).

jme-physics’ API is more geared towards the user, how easy it is to get something up and running quickly and easily while still maintaining all the complexities if needed.

Look at a couple of the tests in our respiratory to see what i mean.

DP :slight_smile:

#4

I’m curious. What’s the difference between point gravity and planet gravity?

#5

Point gravity lets all the objects go to one point. ALL of them!

Planet gravity is where you have a moon revolving around earth and earth revolving around the sun. Basically, all objects have a force applied to them from neighbouring objects…

DP