Racing game using Chipmunk?

[nagl]

Hello everyone, that's my first post here.

I'm thinking about creating a simple race game using Chipmunk as physics engine (view from the top) - zero gravity, collisions, momentum, etc.
Is it good choice to do such thing or it's better to write my own cars behavior? Are there any racing games using Chipmunk out there?

[Beoran]

I used and am using Chipmunk for a top-down view 2D game too, and generally I think it's quite useful. It does require a bit of fine-tuning to get everything as you like, but I think it would work, so go for it. Oh, and what game library will you use? Gosu, rubygame, (ruby/)sdl,... ? Think about that too, it's just as important.

[slembcke]

Chipmunk works OK for top down stuff, but you'll find that doing friction with the ground plane is tricky. Chipmunk only knows how to calculate friction between colliding shapes. That said it is still possible to get Chipmunk to do some of it for you.

You should start by looking at the Tank demo in the Chipmunk source code. It configures joints to calculate the linear and rotational components of the friction. The friction on something like a wheel is more complicated though.

There is also this thread which might contain a lot of useful information:
http://www.slembcke.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1377

[nagl]

Thanks for you anwsers. I'll try do this phycics with Chipmunk.

The game engine I'm using is LibGosu. I hope, I will present alpha version of my game in a few weeks.