Better starting point/documentation
Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2015 12:34 pm
Hi Norbo,
I new to games development with C#/XNA and BEPU appears to be one of the best physics engine available but there is one point I think which could be seriously improved: documentation.
I means, the so called "tutorial" is everything but a tutorial and it doesn't work as-is ! (with VS 2010 express/XNA GS 4.0 and BEPU 1.3.0 main version) As I need to add "using Vector3 = BEPUutilities.Vector3;" statement to get something which works.
IMHO, it's quite a shame to achieve such an amazing engine and... stop right there without providing enough to integrate it to a real code (game or anything else).
What I feel as a beginner is a lack of proper documentation and I think the chosen path (play with demos and try to learn) is not very good BECAUSE BEPU demos use their own all-in-one system mostly (camera, display, ... even the proprietary custom type as Vector3 or Matrix, and everything is linked) which makes very hard to extract only relevant stuff outside to add to a more common/basic XNA (or DirectX) code. I see demos examples as a web of dependencies and nothing works well without some code which needs other code which needs...
A very welcomed code could be a simple 3D display of an object (like the excellent RB Whitaker's loading 3D models tutorial or one sample from Microsoft like collision_3d_heightmap), and add physics stuff on it step by step (world, a force like gravity, physical object like a mere bounding box and a ground to collide with, and so on, one feature after another maybe).
It's not up to the others to fit to BEPU, it's to BEPU to fit to the others, which make a lot more sense (as games are not usually added to a physic engine, instead physic engine is added to games).
Also, I haven't found yet an answer to why BEPU use it's own Vector3 and other type (is that because reference is not the same, kind of DirectX/XNA difference with z axis) ?
Don't misunderstand me, I'm aware it sounds quite negative but I'm really impressed by demo and I found performances are quite amazing despite the lack of proper complete game to be able to really compare to the competitors, Unity for example) and I'm willing offer to help as much as I could, if you wish.
I new to games development with C#/XNA and BEPU appears to be one of the best physics engine available but there is one point I think which could be seriously improved: documentation.
I means, the so called "tutorial" is everything but a tutorial and it doesn't work as-is ! (with VS 2010 express/XNA GS 4.0 and BEPU 1.3.0 main version) As I need to add "using Vector3 = BEPUutilities.Vector3;" statement to get something which works.
IMHO, it's quite a shame to achieve such an amazing engine and... stop right there without providing enough to integrate it to a real code (game or anything else).
What I feel as a beginner is a lack of proper documentation and I think the chosen path (play with demos and try to learn) is not very good BECAUSE BEPU demos use their own all-in-one system mostly (camera, display, ... even the proprietary custom type as Vector3 or Matrix, and everything is linked) which makes very hard to extract only relevant stuff outside to add to a more common/basic XNA (or DirectX) code. I see demos examples as a web of dependencies and nothing works well without some code which needs other code which needs...
A very welcomed code could be a simple 3D display of an object (like the excellent RB Whitaker's loading 3D models tutorial or one sample from Microsoft like collision_3d_heightmap), and add physics stuff on it step by step (world, a force like gravity, physical object like a mere bounding box and a ground to collide with, and so on, one feature after another maybe).
It's not up to the others to fit to BEPU, it's to BEPU to fit to the others, which make a lot more sense (as games are not usually added to a physic engine, instead physic engine is added to games).
Also, I haven't found yet an answer to why BEPU use it's own Vector3 and other type (is that because reference is not the same, kind of DirectX/XNA difference with z axis) ?
Don't misunderstand me, I'm aware it sounds quite negative but I'm really impressed by demo and I found performances are quite amazing despite the lack of proper complete game to be able to really compare to the competitors, Unity for example) and I'm willing offer to help as much as I could, if you wish.