Quick Update
Posted by quantagame on January 11, 2010
So, still working on the new version. I’m planning a lot of changes, but I’ll wait until I have something to show before explaining stuff too much.
So in development/Linux news, Arch Linux flat out didn’t work with PhysX, I have no idea why exactly (I got errors about the shared library being in the wrong format). I really don’t know Linux well enough to guess why this didn’t work, but I guess there must be some difference in the binary formats between Arch and other distros (the PhysX packages were marked rpm or debian, but there was a PhysX pack on the AUR that used the rpm one… and it gave me the same error).
So I put Ubuntu onto a 25gb partition and got everything set up, and it compiled, but the physics doesn’t seem to actually be working (if I create an empty scene with one box and high gravity, the box doesn’t move, the same code in Windows works just fine… I’m hoping it’s just some scene setting or default in the Linux version that I’m overlooking…). And as an added bonus GDB refuses to work in Ubuntu/Codeblocks right now…
In other news I got feedback from the IGF judges and it confirmed a lot of my suspicions and got me thinking on some areas to improve. I might post the feedback up here later on.
UPDATE: Got PhysX running in Ubuntu (turns out it was a little quirk with the Linux version, where if you don’t explicitly disable fluids, it won’t simulate anything), still annoyed I can’t use Arch for developing (in the couple weeks I’ve had it I’ve really really begun to like it… ah well I can still use it for 3d modeling and everything else….). Also, after experimenting with python a bit, I think I’m going to stick with lua for the moment, so after I get lua/luabind set up in ubuntu I can start back on actual coding…
shua said
I don’t know if it’s written in c++, but if it is, chaiscript looks promising as a scripting language. We’re trying to put it in pseudoform.
quantagame said
Yeah, it’s written in C++, and that looks really interesting, looks a lot cleaner than lua/luabind. I might have to give it a try (good thing I’m not too far with lua yet…).
Shua said
Yeah, good thing you’re not too far with lua, we have to rewrite all the scripting stuff, from Lua, which I know next to nothing about, to chaiscript, which I know adjacent to nothing about. It should be fairly easy.
Shua said
Good luck, though, I am really looking forward to a linux release. Archlinux is the bomb-diggedy but I use Mint too.
quantagame said
Yeah, it took me a while figure out all the quirks of luabind, but with chaiscript I was up and running in maybe an hour. I still haven’t exposed much functionality, but it’s super easy to work with.
I’m still irked by the fact that PhysX isn’t working with Arch, but I’m going to assume that most people with Arch probably have a partition or second machine with Ubuntu or Windows or something else that’s more likely to cooperate with PhysX…