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Speaking and Running Into Walls (Collision Fix)

Name:	Ben Garney
Date Posted:	Jan 26, 2007
Rating:	4.6 out of 5
Public:	YES
Comments:	YES
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Blog post

I went and talked about game dev at a small local school, Pioneer Pacific College. Good times; they had some good questions to ask me and I enjoyed telling them about my experiences in the industry. And I got a free bottle of water! (When you're gonna talk non-stop for an hour this sort of thing is important.)

It's something I like doing, so if you're teacher in the Eugene or Portland areas, feel free to drop me a line.

I also did some work on the ExtrudedPolyList (screenshot from this work pictured), which is a key component in player and vehicle collision, and fixed some nasty intermittent bugs in it that have been plaguing Torque games for the past ten years. Ever get stuck on a smooth wall, or crater when you were moving fast across the terrain? There were some glitches in there, which I've fixed. You can grab the fixed player/vehicle collision resource here. We'll be pushing this out in future engine updates, too, but we wanted to get it to the community ASAP - some people it won't affect, others it'll make a huge difference for.

(Thanks to Mr. Eric Hartman for his help in making this fix happen!)

Finally, if you haven't already seen it, you might want to check out the polysoup collision resource I released last month - click here for the .plan.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	02/12/08 - Come See Me At GDC 2008! 10/27/07 - TGEForest Free Release 10/13/07 - Polysoup Free (And IGC) 01/26/07 - Speaking and Running Into Walls (Collision Fix) 12/25/06 - Merry Christmas, Community - Poly Soup 10/05/06 - Community Weekend (Not-IGC) 06/13/06 - Status Update on Atlas! (also, Ben On Vacation) 02/16/06 - GDC & Forest Pack Tech Preview

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Clint Herron (Jan 26, 2007 at 22:58 GMT)

Ben, j00 rock. :)

Really appreciate the attention to detail on these collision fixes -- while it's not the TGB collision fixes I was hoping for when I read the post title, I still appreciate GG continually working to make Torque such a quality product.

Keep up the great work!
Edited on Jan 26, 2007 22:59 GMT

Edward Smith (Jan 26, 2007 at 23:24 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Great work Ben, thanks!

Joseph Greenawalt (Jan 26, 2007 at 23:26 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Thank you Ben (and Eric) :-) It's nice to see some of the old bugs being fixed. It's not as glamorous as adding shiny new features, but it's really nice to know that some attention is being paid to old bugs like these. BTW, does this fix the problems with scaled player collisions?

Stefan Lundmark (Jan 26, 2007 at 23:36 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Holy crap. Going to take this for a test ride, thank you!

Vashner (Jan 27, 2007 at 00:02 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

thx thx.

Ben Garney (Jan 27, 2007 at 00:31 GMT)

Hey guys - found a glitch with terrains - have uploaded new copy of the .cc. :)

Ben Garney (Jan 27, 2007 at 00:43 GMT)

@Joseph: I don't know - it might as the problem I fixed would only get worse with a scaled player.

Joseph Greenawalt (Jan 27, 2007 at 01:05 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I did a couple of quick tests and the player scaling step problems do seem to be gone now. I remember spending hours trying to track down the problem at one point without much luck. Fixing this code is an impressive piece of work.

Ben Garney (Jan 27, 2007 at 02:08 GMT)

Cool! I'm glad to hear this fixed your issue!

It took me about three years to fix this bug (on and off during that time, of course :P). I'm really happy to finally squash it. :)

Tom Bentz (Jan 27, 2007 at 07:51 GMT)

Now thats dedication! Awesome work. I've had problems with vehicles colliding into the terrain and getting stuck. Sounds like this fixes that. Thanks Ben!

AndrewOsborne (Jan 27, 2007 at 09:12 GMT)

Nice work on the collision fix, its great to see you guys still hammering away at even old previously unfixed bugs :)

Your polysoup code is a wonderful addition, although licensing it for $8500 / $2250 (unsupported) seems to put it out of the majority of Torque developers reach, and seems rather strange to be licensing a feature of an engine for 15 x the actual cost of TGE.

Ben Garney (Jan 27, 2007 at 12:18 GMT)

That's only commercial licensees, unless I'm mistaken. So if you're an indie, go to town!

We're also more than happy to trade with you - donate some improvements to the polysoup code and you're likely to walk away with a nice shiny new commercial license to it. There's plenty of obvious, easy ways to improve it. Just drop me an e-mail if that's something you're interested in. We're much more interested in spreading this tech around and making it useful to people than we are in making a buck - just want to keep our bases covered legally/business wise...

Ashley Leach (Jan 27, 2007 at 13:33 GMT)

By Indie you mean we can make games with it and sell them for under 250K US (or something like that) ?

p.s. Awesome Update BTW keep up the great work

edit: i cant spell :)
Edited on Jan 27, 2007 13:33 GMT

Pisal Setthawong (Jan 27, 2007 at 14:46 GMT)

Talking in classes in fun. Great to know you enjoyed it :) It's lucky you got water. Most places don't even offer it LOL

Tim Hutcheson (Jan 27, 2007 at 18:45 GMT)

Wow, if this is the bug I think it is, that's awesome.

My building search and enter code will probably work now. Used to get stuck on the edge of the walls while looking for a doorway.

Thanks.

Tom Spilman (Jan 28, 2007 at 00:52 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Two features i'd love to see someone add to this...

1. Have the collision use a special mesh named "polysoup-1" and if it isn't found then fall back to the current method of doing collision with the visible meshes.

2. Add polysoup support to StaticShape.

James Laker (BurNinG) (Jul 19, 2007 at 14:59 GMT)

@Andrew... Where did you see that price? I can't seem to find any pricing.

Joseph Greenawalt (Jul 19, 2007 at 16:33 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

That price used to be listed here:
tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/Torque_Shader_Engine/PolySoupAddon

I don't see it there anymore, but it does say this "The PolySoup License is intended to be used for games only, by individuals performing game development for non-profit. Any other use is governed by the PolySoup Addon Commercial Product License."

and towards the bottom:

"Please read the file readme_eula.txt for information on the private licensing of this code. Please contact Timothy Aste at [tima@garagegames.com] for information on the commercial licensing of this code for commercial works."

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