Ok, so physics.

I gave ODE the heave after it simply would not behave properly (a falling object would have its velocity's z-component adjusted instead of its y-component post-collision with a plane facing in the +y direction... with no explanation) in favor of Bullet Physics.

I first became aware of Bullet Physics a long time ago when Chris Delay of Introversion Software wrote about using it in their upcoming game Subversion. He said that he got it integrated, up and running in under 2 hours, which, having struggled with ODE for over a week, seemed extraordinary to me.

So I downloaded it and, after some extensively frustrating time getting the libraries compiled (actually wound up being easier than I was making it), I have it integrated into Rustbot. Behold a glorious video!

Pretty impressive, no? I put down four blocks, then when I put one in the middle of all of them, they go kaboom! Yay!

One thing that concerns me at the moment is regarding joints. ODE was conceptually centered around joints between objects, which was something I had hoped to exploit to the fullest using Rustbot (considering that the player will be attaching objects together the whole time). Now I just need to figure out the syntax for doing so with Bullet.

Until next time...