Sorry your browser is not supported!

I haven't bought DarkPhysics yet, but I am still deciding if it is worth my while. Right now, I am programming a game heavily based on physics interactions with the world, which includes realistic collapses and destruction/damage to buildings. For the idea, I thought that if I created a building that had many limbs to specify each story, which would then have the columns inside and 4 walls to make up the story, that I could calculate the impact an object has on the building, then determine whether or not to delete a smaller limb to show impact/damage, or to destroy a whole floor or columns to allow the building to collapse. Now, I would need DarkPhysics to make this task easier, but I am not sure if it has the capabilities to do realistic building collapses and damage without the system that I am designing.

-igitur

Are you a Terrorist?

Dark Physics has all the features you want except I have major problems with the fact I CANNOT for the life of me get a dynamic Mesh. (Meaning Load an EGG Model, set it on its END and have it roll to its side like any well behaved EGG Would.)

You need to use BOXES, SPHERES, I guess Cars and Ragdolls because I've seen demos... but DarkBasic demos not GDK ones. All the COOL demos are for DBPro..

Static MESHs? No PROBLEM. Joints? Dunno but I have seen enough to believe they work. Friction and materials, kinematic objects, player controller... (Some dont like the player controller) I haven't messed with it.

Note even the help says the Dynamic Mesh Body (Egg analogy) doesn't work with all models (I NEVER seen it work yet...just making sure you KNOW) and the HELP says it might get discontinued. This made me so Sad I started a regime of anti-depressants. LOL

A Building? I think you can do it. Joint Strengths are programming I understand, and you can make them have a tesile or "Breaking" amount... where a Force GREATER than X can dislodge it.

trying to model a REAL building crumbling? Like for a safte commitee, or a demolition computer model... Um... I don't recommend.... Without RIGOROUS SELF TESTS, and most likely you'll want the physics actual PCI card on hand.

That's my two cents. Hope it was somewhat helpful.

A few cautions.

DP is not a panacea for speed, unless you have the accelerated hardware. It is still better than reasonably fast, but if you make a house out of lifesize bricks and link each brick to each other one with a joint with a certain breaking strength, and try to run that simulation without the hardware, you will get extremely low frame rate.

For DP to work, you and all your players need to download and install the Ageia physics drivers. Some players may balk at this, even if you redistribute the drivers with your game.

Having said that, I can't see why you couldn't build a house from reasonable-sized wall and floor sections weakly jointed together. The "complex structure" demo that comes with DP is basically that. The sections would need to be reasonably largish.

Another option would be to make your walls from cloth. Not completely realistic if you are using a brick building but o.k. for lath & plaster as well as concrete "Tilt ups"

Setting the material parameters just right is a challenge but doable

Codger