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Dark GDK / JGC v3 Beta - Vehicular Fun download Here for Download to Play :)

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jason p sage
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Location: Ellington, CT USA
Posted: 16th Jan 2009 03:29 Edited at: 16th Jan 2009 03:29
I figured this demo might be worth its own thread - even though I know its not perfect - it sure is A LOT of fun

This is the last demo of the physics development for awhile - I have biggie plans - .... Iron Infantry is not Dead! (In fact I added more pics to my gallery if you're interested if following my sig to take a look...

Anyways .. tell me what ya think - I think many of you will like how far the Eighteen wheeler has come Oh.. and the "Centipede" Limo is my 15 year old son's favorite... something about drifting?



--Jason

(Picture First, EXE next Post )

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jason p sage
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Location: Ellington, CT USA
Posted: 16th Jan 2009 03:30

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Slayer93
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Posted: 16th Jan 2009 04:00
Very Cool stuff Jason, now I have to get vehicle physics in ODE sometime soon, you work pretty fast judging by the post dates. Either that or I work way to slow

Camera could act pretty wacky when your vehicle is spinning though.

jason p sage
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Posted: 16th Jan 2009 04:33
LOL - the chase Cam? Oh Yeah! It will go for a ride for sure... I'm not too too worried about it right now, as the amount of work already in that demo has been most ehaustive.

You'll notice too - peculiar wheel to other body interactions and some wierd sliding depnding on shock asorber position - and occasional "Sling-shot" anomalies that launch the vehicle for a wild trip airborne or a vehicular pong game LOL... But THIS is something I'm concerned with and have two more strategies planned to try.

First - the wheels are simply Graphical representations (they do roll visually though - but being a medialess demo - less one hardcoded bitmap with the ramp blue arrow, you might not have noticed). Basically they are a ray trace of sorts akin to sparky's ray casting or Ageia Physics Ray casting.

Actually having true wheels that are physical bodies is my next goal because I ran into a snag working with terrains where, for example, the 4x4 trucks suspension is high enough away from the vehicle physicsal body, that the wheel "sinks in the mud" while the basic, sport, and centipede cars have no problem flying over terrain. Now, physical objects do NOT fall through the terrain unless they hit it so hard it doesn't register or something. So I'd like to figure out a vehicle solution that uses the "motors" in the joints and works some how along those lines.

If the mechanical means is to much of a chore, I might try a sparky ray cast hybrid to see if there is anything I can do like that as a last resort.

I'm not worried though - I mean - It's definately come a long way since I started with this - and it's been pretty fun for the most part (some drudgery but I digress) ... and I'm overall pleased.

Thanx for the kind words Slayer93 - (cool Band )

--Jason

Slayer93
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Posted: 16th Jan 2009 06:14
Quote: "You'll notice too - peculiar wheel to other body interactions and some wierd sliding depnding on shock asorber position - and occasional "Sling-shot" anomalies that launch the vehicle for a wild trip airborne or a vehicular pong game LOL... But THIS is something I'm concerned with and have two more strategies planned to try."


Yep, I don't know how difficult Tokomak Physics are but with ODE it can be a real pain to try and stabilize the simulation without it going crazy.

Quote: "I'm not worried though - I mean - It's definately come a long way since I started with this - and it's been pretty fun for the most part (some drudgery but I digress) ... and I'm overall pleased."


Yep, it sure is fun to mess with physics, even if they don't always work the way you want it can still return some interesting and wacky results

Zuka
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Posted: 17th Jan 2009 02:04
I don't have to worry about DGDK integration with PhysX, because all my physics calculations run on the server and I'm using the DirectX SDK itself.
AndrewT
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Posted: 17th Jan 2009 02:13 Edited at: 17th Jan 2009 02:18
Downloading now.

Edit:

Pretty nice! Vehicle movement was a little jerky for me but it was overall pretty good.

jason p sage
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Posted: 17th Jan 2009 02:27 Edited at: 17th Jan 2009 02:35
@AndrewT - When you run it - there are two 4x4's. One has articulating steering.. and when you play with goosing the throttle and getting the front wheel to bounce just a little - you can almost ride wheelies

--Jason

[edit] Yeah I know there is some jerkyness - and I'm working on some of that - how it relates to the suspension being just raycasts, and the sliding is kinda off... Glad you thought its basically pretty good.

I'm doing tests this evening to try and come up with a different configuration of things.

goals:
1: wheels are actually physical objects

2: Mesh terrains aren't see through for high suspension (4x4's get stuck in the mud LOL)

3: Experimenting with joints further to see if I can get a good handle on them (quaternion based) to possibly make "real suspension" in many ways (Like make wheels turn and move car versus car move and turn wheels amount traveled

SushiBox
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Posted: 17th Jan 2009 08:20
Hey Jason, I have been tinkering with your demos on this lately and I'm really impressed. Good job man, I cant wait to see more.

However, if it helps the progress anymore, when I drive, the faster I go the easier it is to turn. The physics for the car almost seems opposite until you violently spin out of control. I liked the fact that you can loose traction and spin out, but you should really be turning much quicker, but not as sharp.

Also for some reason, the HOME key never works on my PC for your examples. I press it and the camera just tilts to the left lol.

Other than that, bravo. I'm sure it will only get better :3

www.Helios-Online.net
jason p sage
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Posted: 17th Jan 2009 15:51
@SushiBox - thanx very much for the vote of confidence

Yes, there are some odd handling issues. Though I'm perplexed about the HOME key thing. Also, I find it harder to turn the faster I go.

I'll tell ya that tuning each vehicle is no simple task.. and takes a lot of trial and error. Also, the steering to date is arrow keys and that's not linear like real steering - so thats a challenge.... For example "TrackMania" allows ya to drive with the arrows and its pretty sweet.

Well, I'm not done yet... but hopefully like you said, it will only get better!

--Jason

Zuka
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Posted: 17th Jan 2009 20:32
Um. How about positioning the cursor in the middle of the screen, hiding it, and making the turning power proportional to dbMouseMoveX()?
jason p sage
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Posted: 17th Jan 2009 21:37
That could work swell... I'm not sure how many people like driving with the mouse though... hmm... Perhaps if I add joystick, then joystick and mouse could both be optional with the keys eh? Going by proportional joystick, mouse, etc.. paves (lol) the way for using those steering columns for those who have them...

Right now I have bigger issues. I've been struggling with how to make real physical object wheels versus rendering where they should be. Just Placing "rigid" bodies where you think they should be doesn't translate to the correct collision forces - e.g. Tire doesn't react like you would think. I have to do it with ray casts so far... and my experiments so far have left me a bit discouraged... so I think I'm going to play a game for a bit.

--Jason

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