Quote: "Shouldn't be any need to 'mess' with the physics if GG is using the Bullet engine properly, all that should be needed is exposure of the physics engine to Lua so scripts can set parameters and react to physical events.
One thing I will be looking into is the first part, i.e. is GG using the engine properly? "
The short answer is no. It is not set up correctly.
Just exposing the Bullet Physics engine to LUA would not be correct.
The game engine( GG in this case ) needs to use the Bullet physics engine to create its own
game physics. These game physics would then be exposed to the LUA scripter to create
unique game play.
For those interested in the complete details of the coding overhaul continue reading.
I need to create a complete wrapping of the Bullet Physics engine specific to GG DirectX 11 version.
This is much the same as making a dll for the old DBPro language. I need to create a command
set that makes it clear and simple to call in the main game engine. This then gets built in a lib file
so it is exposed and can then be called in all other areas of the engine, including lua if needed.
My intention is to set the physics up with a couple of designer UIs so there is less scripting by hand
unless you want to. For example a ragdoll designer so you can create a custom ragdoll for any model
you import into GG. This would then get saved as binary Bullet collision shape file .bcs to be loaded
when needed. This is faster then a Lua script and since this would not really change there is not necessarly
a reason to create a script. Another example would be a collision shape designer for complex dynamic
objects that have concavity. This would automatically do a convex hull decomposition of the object and
create a compound collision shape and allow changing the center of mass of the object. Again saving this
to a .bcs file for the model. Note this is needed for better vehicle physics.Video explains better.
Another example would be Automatic Fracture physics which is my favorite, probably because
all the time I spent developing it.
Also a vehicle designer for imported models.
The coffee is lovely dark and deep,and I have code to write before I sleep.
