What am I missing?
by Nathan Huffman · in Torque Game Builder · 12/05/2006 (11:10 am) · 4 replies
Please help with these two physics-related issues I'm having:
1) this problem is best seen if my object has a custom collision polygon (not too detailed, 6 sides.. it's a basic rock), has at least some angular velocity, and hits another object (say, the "ground" of my level) with a decent amount of horizontal linear velocity. It attempts to "roll", but it "studders" getting stuck on each of the collision polygons surface. After it's done doing this, which looks totally stupid :), it'll tend to want to settle but start to suddenly bounce or roll more (like it's having a seizure or something!)
Any ideas?
2) All objects on my level are settled, and not moving. I am running TGB in windowed mode. I put the TGB window and, doesn't really matter, for this example lets say TextPad right next to eachother. TGB is the active window. I click on Textpad making TGB inactive. When I go back to TGB in any fashion (alt+tab, clicking on it, etc) all of the physics-enabled items (like my rock for example), start moving like force from no where was applied to them.
Any ideas?
Thanks :)
1) this problem is best seen if my object has a custom collision polygon (not too detailed, 6 sides.. it's a basic rock), has at least some angular velocity, and hits another object (say, the "ground" of my level) with a decent amount of horizontal linear velocity. It attempts to "roll", but it "studders" getting stuck on each of the collision polygons surface. After it's done doing this, which looks totally stupid :), it'll tend to want to settle but start to suddenly bounce or roll more (like it's having a seizure or something!)
Any ideas?
2) All objects on my level are settled, and not moving. I am running TGB in windowed mode. I put the TGB window and, doesn't really matter, for this example lets say TextPad right next to eachother. TGB is the active window. I click on Textpad making TGB inactive. When I go back to TGB in any fashion (alt+tab, clicking on it, etc) all of the physics-enabled items (like my rock for example), start moving like force from no where was applied to them.
Any ideas?
Thanks :)
#2
Do you think it's more preferable to wait till TGB change to ticked physics or working right now without taking account of these bugs since the way of using physics will be more or less the same ?
I've see 3 versions of the physics example using ship bouncing everywhere and always get those strange behaviours so i assume that we can only limit this effect for 2D platform games.
By the way how far is the priority for this change ? Because i'm waiting to use tgb since quite long time now and prefer searching for others solutions if this is possibly for mid-2007.
12/11/2006 (2:15 pm)
Hi Thomas,Do you think it's more preferable to wait till TGB change to ticked physics or working right now without taking account of these bugs since the way of using physics will be more or less the same ?
I've see 3 versions of the physics example using ship bouncing everywhere and always get those strange behaviours so i assume that we can only limit this effect for 2D platform games.
By the way how far is the priority for this change ? Because i'm waiting to use tgb since quite long time now and prefer searching for others solutions if this is possibly for mid-2007.
#3
Thanks
12/13/2006 (6:48 pm)
Any ideas if there is any more information available about the new ticked physics in TGB? Main thing I want to know is whether or not any physics we apply to our current projects will be automatically converted to ticked physics in the next release. If so, then I can carry on with one of my projects, otherwise it would be a waste of my time to have to carry on using time-based physics and then redo it all in the ticked version.Thanks
#4
12/16/2006 (9:49 pm)
It's not exactly clear right now what if any changes would be necessary for current projects to work with the physics changes. If I had to guess, I would say that most likely it will be exactly the same. I wouldn't wait to start, but I also wouldn't spend too much time debugging physics related issues for now (in other words, I would get your physics working somewhat right and then focus on gameplay). 
Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
2) This is another problem caused by time-based physics. What's happening is that when the TGB window loses focus (to notepad, or whatever else) it stops applying forces. When it regains focus the engine sees how much time has passed and applies all the forces that would've been applied over that time all at once. With ticked physics this will not be an issue. I realize that doesn't help much for version 1.1.3, but there are other solutions in the meantime - all of which involve some sort of pausing of the engine when it loses focus. If you search (or just browse) the forums you should be able to find several posts on the topic. I'm not sure whether or not they require source modifications, so you'll have to check that out. If they do and you don't have a Pro license you might be out of luck until the big physics update.