Blockland Physics
by Kyle Carter · 12/04/2008 (10:12 am) · 34 comments
You can watch it in High-def on YouTube here.
One of my little side projects finally sees the light of day. Eric Hartman has announced a new feature for Blockland - shown in the video above. Client-side brick physics powered by Bullet, with one way interactions between players/vehicles/explosions and bricks.
Doing this was tricky because Blockland levels are largely user built and can contain up to hundreds of thousands of bricks. Most broadphase solvers puke past 2**16 objects. Read about the technical details a on my blog.
In the realm of PushButton Labs, things are going well. Your PBL Fortune Cookie reads: Keep an eye out for cool announcements.
Oh - and if I don't post again before then - Merry Christmas, everybody!
#3
12/04/2008 (10:22 am)
Hey Ken! I hope you are beardly!
#4
12/04/2008 (10:23 am)
I am semi-beardly. I hope you stay tall! Let's get lunch sometime sugarbeard. <3
#5
12/04/2008 (10:34 am)
Very sweet, Ben. :D 
#6
Edit: just for future reference, though, you mentioned PhysX being a bloated 80 meg addition to the download -- that used to be the case, but it's changed radically now, they have a stripped down quiet install version which weighs in at 4 megs. Look for Physx_game_installer_281.msi on nvidia's site:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx_downloads.html
12/04/2008 (10:50 am)
Wow, nice work Ben!Edit: just for future reference, though, you mentioned PhysX being a bloated 80 meg addition to the download -- that used to be the case, but it's changed radically now, they have a stripped down quiet install version which weighs in at 4 megs. Look for Physx_game_installer_281.msi on nvidia's site:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx_downloads.html
#7
That's awesomeness all packaged up. Love the music choice Ben.
12/04/2008 (10:52 am)
Hey Ben & Eric!That's awesomeness all packaged up. Love the music choice Ben.
#9
12/04/2008 (11:01 am)
Saw this on your blog this morning! Very cool work!
#10
12/04/2008 (11:04 am)
Very very nice...
#11
12/04/2008 (11:08 am)
@Chris: Ah, good link. But it seems like there are some troubles right now developer.nvidia.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2392. Hopefully they get it sorted out, 4mb is a lot easier to swallow than 80mb. Of course, Bullet is nice as it is cross platform, too. 
#12
12/04/2008 (11:11 am)
Wow!
#13
Might be time to write the Bullet layer anyway, though.
12/04/2008 (11:21 am)
Oh, hm, that sucks about the 4 meg installer. Thanks for the info there. Hope they get it sorted. Might be time to write the Bullet layer anyway, though.
#14
12/04/2008 (11:22 am)
Porting over was pretty quick. But we don't integrate with the more advanced features (joints and fluid and such), which is probably where the pain point would be in a port. Good luck! :) Latest Bullet has some nice CUDA abilities. 
#15
12/04/2008 (12:21 pm)
Really cool :) 
#16
12/04/2008 (1:24 pm)
I can not believe what I just saw, inspiring. Thank you! 
#17
12/04/2008 (1:40 pm)
Nice vid! Excellent work. This reminds me of Boomblox on crack! Keep up the good work Ben.
#18
12/04/2008 (2:14 pm)
That is some awesome tech. Nicely fitting background track too. 
#19
12/04/2008 (2:47 pm)
Wow! Talk about destructible environments!
#20
12/04/2008 (2:56 pm)
Dude, you were kicking blocks and taking names like a peg leg pirate with rocket soles. I give it a ten...er, 5. 
Associate Josh Engebretson
Blockland is looking (even more) awesome!