ShrimpWorks

My idea for implimenting non-physics physics into my little game framework didn’t work out too well, so I gave in and took a look around for options.

It seems only ODE is available to Python, via PyODE. Not many [open source] physics engines seem to have Python bindings, which I find rather odd.

As it turns out, it isn’t actually all that of a mission to get ODE and Ogre working together, and the results I’ve got so far are quite acceptable. I can spawn loads of cubes (of varying sizes) and throw them around the scene and they bounce and jump around in a suitable fasion.

I haven’t tried with balls or polygon-accurate stuff yet, that’s next on the to-do list. I also intend writing a short how-to for PyODE and PyOgre integration at some point, as I was a little confused to start with, not knowing quite where or how to begin, and there is no PyODE/PyOgre example code floating around to reference.

EDIT: Example using PyODE and PyOgre now available - http://shrimpworks.za.net/2006/03/21/pyode-physics-in-pyogre-example/

Technorati Tags: Physics, Ogre, PyOgre, ODE, PyODE, Python

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It seems as though the guys at work are seriously looking into the option of doing some game development next year some time, and they’ve been busy checking out various engines and frameworks to help with this. Despite being the only person at work who plays games seriously, and my history of developments on the Unreal engine, I haven’t really been included much with what’s going on.

However, since game development (of any kind) is the number one thing I’d like to be doing with my life (NOT point of sale systems!!), I’ve decided to involve myself anyway :D.

I have been playing around with a couple of game and physics engines (games being discussed are potentially vehicle-based), and Irrlicht particularly seems rather nice. Korpse however, suggested I take a look at Ogre. I was very pleasently surprised to find the PyOgre project, which exposes about everything Ogre can do, to Python (you don’t even need the Ogre SDK, it works completely on it’s own), and seems very well supported. I’m a lot more comfortable with Python than I am with C++ :).

The only down side, is that Ogre is not a complete game engine, but rather simply a graphics engine. Meaning, I’ll have to work out how to add sound, physics, advanced input options (Ogre does support keyboards at least), etc on my own. There are a lot of options available for all of those, so I’m not really worried about it at the moment.

I’ve begin putting together a bit of a basic framework for myself, trying to base how things work around how UnrealScript works and interacts with classes and objects. It’s working out pretty cool, thanks again to Python.

As a test project, I’ve decided to put together a sort of basic World War II flight sim. All you need really is a model, some terrain, and basic flight physics (which I plan on simulating without the use of a physics engine, in a similar fasion to how I did some stuff in Unreal Tournament [pre-Karma]).

Since the scripting is going well, I decided to take a shot at a quick model. I came across Wings 3D — a simple “subdivision modeler”. Basically you start off with whatever primitive shape (cube, spheres, cylinder, etc) you think will suit what you’re going to build, and stretch and warp it into the final product. I’ve never modeled like this before, but it works surprisingly well.

After 2 hours work, I got the following result from a 16-sided cylinder:

There are quite a number of rather ugly polygons, but it was a learning experience :).

Technorati Tags: Game Development, Game Engines, Irrlicht, Ogre, PyOgre, Modeling, Wings 3D

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Update: DynaBar 2 is available, the download link below is out of date.

Finally got around to making a proper release of something :).

Presenting DynaBar, a PHP script which can create dynamic images through the use of plugins, inspired by the Userbars.com website.

I thought it would be cool to be able to have userbars with dynamic data in them, stuff like game server status, stats, etc., etc. to make them a little more exciting. I also wanted to learn a bit more about PHP’s image manipulation, so this proved a good oppertunity for that.

Basically, the whole thing works off a plugin system, which lets you drop in a PHP script (the plugin), set up a config file (the userbar), and link to an image. DynaBar then goes about loading the plugin, requesting it’s data (so it goes off and collects stats, or whatever), and building the final image (putting on the [optional] scanline effect, glossy shine, and layering the text data from the plugin on all of that).

I’ve also created a small designer script, which allows you or any users to create new userbars using plugins or whatever, with their own images and content, in a simple wizard-like interface. The end result is ready-to-use forum or HTML code. :).

Here are some examples, using plugins included in the package:

Simple, plain text (nothing dynamic about it).

This one queries LastFM for which song I’ve played most recently in my media player.

Finally, here we have Battlefield 2 stats, coming from BF2Tracker’s clan XML feed.

Grab the download from the bottom of this post. Please read the README in the doc/ directory.

Technorati Tags: Userbars, PHP, Images, Signatures, GD2

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(Wanted to reply to this NewsForge article, since some other seemingly know-it-all n00bs were ranting in the comments about Smarty being a waste of time, however their comments system won’t let me post [most likely a problem on SAIX's side])

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After having used Smarty for around 2 years now, I don’t think I could ever go back to writing PHP applications without it.

It’s brilliant to be able to spend some time working out your code, logic, etc all nicely in a PHP script, assigning the variables and values you want to present on the final page, then go and throw together a plain HTML page with some smarty tags to display that information.

Bug in your HTML? No need to dig through PHP scripts bloated with loads of HTML searching for problems, just whip out the template and correct it easily. Same goes for debugging the PHP code, it’s not all mixed in with the HTML so it’s millions of time easier to debug.

Overall, there’s no faster, cleaner way of writing PHP applications.

Technorati Tags: Smarty, PHP, Templates

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