Docs, Demos and Tutorials

[ker]

The new docs are perfect!
how would I submit fixes? (the body-page-comment tells me to use cpBodySetMass to set the momentum ) I don't wanna fill the comments with useless fixes like that

[supertommy]

The wiki pages are accessible from the chipmunk repository, so if you have that checked out, you could change what you want to change and post a patch on the forum. I took the liberty of making a patch for the error you mentioned.

Unfortunately, the forum doesn't like .diff or .txt extensions, so I tarred it up before attaching it. Is it possible to allow .diff (or whatever extension people prefer on patches)?

[bennysce]

Ok! Now that ScribBall is out on the Mac and submitted to Apple to be on the iPhone, I figured that I should finally get back to working some on Chipmunk. I spent most of the day trying to update the documentation and get it all moved over to the project wiki on the Google code page. I've almost finished with that.

http://code.google.com/p/chipmunk-physi ... umentation

Once that is complete, I plan to try and track down the remaining couple of known issues and make a new (long overdue) release.

sounds great! I'm planning to use chipmunk in my top-down shooter. Looking forward to the new release. I'll try to present what I've come up with here. I too would like to see some more tutorials/interactive examples.

[slembcke]

Unfortunately, the forum doesn't like .diff or .txt extensions, so I tarred it up before attaching it. Is it possible to allow .diff (or whatever extension people prefer on patches)?

Took a while to find the setting, but I managed to enable plain text files and added .diff to the extensions list.

[ker]

Since I got a running version of my spaceship game now, I'm thinking about writing a few small tutorials for chipmunk (probably together with gosu for graphical output).
It'll basically come in a few steps:
1 create random convex polygons (asteroids) and make them fly around
2 create a user-controllable object that only gets controlled by thrusters (meaning forces with offset)
3 cool particles for the thrusters
4 create a weapon that hits asteroids and makes them move (tractor beam?)

This would be fairly easy using my own c++ stuff, but I guess that's not really the point for the tutorials. (even thou I could explain what every function does in chipmunk-c-functions, and it's not really about learning function names, more about "how to do xyz", "how to use function abc")
Would it make sense to do this in ruby (meaning would that explain enough to be "portable" to other languages, or would that simply end with the same problem as above?)
Or would a c-implementation actually be the best idea since that would (afaik) be very portable (meaning portable to handheld devices, not only other operating systems)

[slembcke]

I think a C implementation would be preferable because more people would be able to run it on their system without special libraries. However, having examples in a variety of languages and runtimes for different systems would be great too.

[ker]

ok, I'll wait then until you finish your Demo-system in trunk (I think it makes most sense to create them as "modules" for the demos, since anyone who can run the demo will be able to quickly do stuff from the tutorial) (There are all demos missing except for 7-9 and CMakeLists.txt in Demo, trunk and src is broken)

[singpolyma]

Even just RDoc for the ruby bindings would be a great start

[juanpi]

Hi guys,
Here is my humble contribution to the demo stash.
I saw that in the new version there is already a kind of long range interaction, so my demo is not new on that but...You get some functions to implement magnets and electric charges and as many as you want in each body (well, the iterations get very heavy if you put many of them O(n^2), I guess, could be even more). I also show a simple Verlet velocity algorithm which is more precise than the Euler and is needed to have stable magnets...check that I am using also 10 substeps.

It is working with the ChipmunkDemo format, so it is just a matter of adding it to the CMakeList.txt in the /src/Demo subdir (And modify ChipmunkDemo.c accordingly).

What you will see is 10 magnets, 10 bodies with electrical charge and 10 bodies with magnets and electrical charges...They assemble funny shapes!

I hope this one, or a modified version, could be included in the demo list.

Comments and suggestions are welcome (BTW, I am just a simple physicist... forgive my naive programming way)

My two cents.

[slembcke]

I hope this one, or a modified version, could be included in the demo list.

Very cool. I added it as as "Magnets and Electric Charges" with credit to your name. Thanks!