What's New
July 20, 2008
Hello again. It's been a while. How are you doing? I'm fine.
I'm switching internet providers, which means I no longer have access to the web page space at Comcast, so I'm moving DroidQuest.com to Verizon. And I'm taking this opportunity to give a little update on what's happening on the DroidQuest front.
In the process of switching, I was looking at this web site and decided to take out all the Pocket DroidQuest stuff. I still think it was a cool idea, but my Pocket PC died and I can't find a new one that doesn't have a phone attached to it. So I'm not planning on working on that anymore.
But I am working on something. Here, take a look:
This is a screen shot from a test program which I am using to explore two libraries: JMonkeyEngine and JME Physics 2.
JMonkeyEngine is a Java library specifically designed for game development. It handles screen management, 3D rendering, mouse/keyboard/joystick input, and sound. JME Physics 2 is an add-on for JMonkeyEngine which handles simulated physics: Collisions, friction, gravity, forces, torques, bounce, hinges... all that good stuff.
What has this got to do with DroidQuest? Well, this is officially the third time I've started to work on DroidQuest 3D. The first two times I was working with Java 3D on a very limited laptop (4Mb video, not expandable), and ran into a lot of technical problems. My first attempt I was trying to tackle the techniques for 3D collisions and had little success. In my second attempt I wrote two 3D editors for items and levels, but in the process discovered some major limitations in Java 3D 1.3. Since my laptop couldn't run Java 3D 1.4, I was stuck for a while.
But now I have a new computer.
Now I'm sure you have a lot of questions concerning DroidQuest 3D. What will it be like? When is it coming out? Well, the answer to all these questions is "I don't know." DroidQuest 3D is in it's infancy... no, it isn't. Infancy suggests that there is a general design that is being built. This is before infancy. This is even before conception. This is... well... foreplay. I'm still in the stage where I'm having fun trying to figure out how things work.
The screen shot shows my test "sandbox", which is holding a few randomly generated objects (boxes, capsules, and spheres). The robot in the center is a test vehicle that I am using to explore various ways to control an avatar in 3d physics. As you can see, it is a cylinder balanced on a sphere, with two arms made up of a chain of smaller spheres. It moves about by directed torques on the lower sphere, and the balance is ensured by pushing the body's center of gravity below the floor. That is just one of the many fun things you can do with virtual physics. I can make the robot run about and collide with the other objects, which sends them flying.