Skip to main content
gamedev.net
🔒 Locked

Newton Physics Engine Documentation

Started by Ezbez 3 replies 4.6k views
Original Post
Ezbez
Ezbez
Seeing as the official forums don't seem to actually want anyone to post anything on the board( read this), I geuss I'll ask here. Do you guys know of where to find good, vaguely completely documentation for Newton Physics Engine? Any tutorials would be good too(the ones that they have in the Wiki use soo much code from other non-physics sections, that its neigh-impossible to detangle the physics parts). If there are any (free!)physics engines of aproximately the same ability as Newton, but with better documentation, please tell me. I may be completely missing all the really good stuff, but there doesn't seem to be even simple descriptions of what the functions do.(some functions do, most don't) Also, what are all the things with the prefix of 'd'(eg: dVector, dFloat, dMatrix) in it? I have no idea what these are. Thanks in advanced. Edit: link above broken. But w/e, not really important.
walaber
walaber
there is a WIKI project working to add more documentation / examples of how to use Newton. the author is budy working on the engine, so the documentation isn't always as detailed as it could be.
Ezbez
Ezbez
I had actually seen your(unless there is another Walaber?) stickied post on the Newton forum about creating that. Its exactly what I want, but it is, as you know, lacking in detail/completeness. This makes it dificult for a complete beginner like me to know how to remove all of the 'toolbox' stuff from the physics stuff used in the tutorials.

Another question:
Are all of these 'toolbox' headers necessary for everything that uses Newton? I'd like to avoid using them if possible, but would use them if its absolutely necessary.

Thanks.
walaber
walaber
to use newton you only need to include newton.h. that's it.

the dVector and what not are just simple vector classes for the demos. I'm sure you have similar classes in whatever 3D engine you are using.
Ezbez
Ezbez
Heh, I'm actually making my own 2D(2D using OpenGL) engine, which doesn't need vector/matrix classes nearly as much as a 3D one does. My problems where mostly comming from when the tutorial does something along the lines of 'box.SetMatrix(matrix)', which I had next to no idea what it was doing. I just had to poke around the (uncommented) source code for a while to figure out what all the random function calls where doing.

I think I'm finally figuring out how to get it to work since my program now compiles and doesn't crash at start. The one box that its supposed to be controlling disappears when I try to use Newton to control it. Meh, I'll figure it out.

Thanks for the help. I'll drop by the Newton forums if I need some more specific help.

Topic Locked

This topic has been locked by a moderator. New replies are not allowed.

Sign in to reply to this topic.