Official Pascal-Header (SDK 1.53), last update 26.05.2006

[Sascha Willems]

I know of hat "problem", as I myself tried Newton with FreePascal (but under Win32). It's just 3 or 4 functions that are in the headers (and in the original C-Headers, therefore I took them too) which aren't exposed through the DLL. When NGD1.35 will be released and I update the headers for Delphi, I'll do a quick test with FP (Win32) to avoid such things happening.

P.S. : If I'll ever get the time, I'll try to get at least some basic template working with FPC under Linux. I don't want to use Lazarus, so I decided to go for KDevelop (which looks very nice), but it's so hard to set-up everything correct that I never got it to actually work (I got KDevelop installed, and FPC too, and I even managed to install ATI-drivers with HW-acceleration for OpenGL). But as I said : If I get the time I'll try to test everything under Linux and also test on every update before releasing new Pascal-Headers.

[Sascha Willems]

I just updated the Newton page :

• Minor fix to the header
  Free Pascal (in contrast to Delphi) threw out some errors, as there were some functions declared in the headers (in the official ones too) that are either not in newton.dll or just are not exported from it. So I commented them out and the header can now be used with Free Pascal without any changes to it.
  
• All demos ported to SDL
  I was recently contacted by Dominique Loius, who maintains the SDL-translations to Pascal if I could do some Newton demos to include with the official JEDI-SDL release. Without wasting a second I agreed and ported all the developer demos that were on my page to use SDL, so they can be compiled under all OS'es that are supported by Pascal+Newton+SDL (which in the end are Win32, Linux and MacOS). So you'll now find all the developer demos on that page are using SDL and moreover I also updated all the demos to use accumulative time-slicing, so they are now all framerate-independent. Right now you can't use them with Linux, as there is only a static library for Linux included in the current SDK. But Julio already told me that there will be a dynamic Library for Linux in the next release (1.35).
  
• Two new demos
  While I was on the subject of porting the demos I added two new ones. One is very very basic, and only shows how to do the most basic stuff with newton. It's meant for people that have problems extracting infos out of complexer codes/apps.
  The second one is more interesting, as it implements a character controller inside a rather complex environment (with stairs and some dynamic stuff). The character controller itself was inspired by the one that Walaber made, so Kudos go to him!

A note for people that just wan to try out the demos :
If you download the demos, only the Win32-binary and the source is included. So you can't just run them which is in my view annoying if you just want to try it out. Therefore I packed all the win32-binaries, needed DLLs and data into one zip for those kind of people to try out : Get it here (~700 KBytes)


Feedback, wishes or constructive Feedback appreciated.

[martinw]

Those demos are pretty cool , I did have a problem with the character controller one though, just got a blue screen after seeing lots of cubes arranged in a larger rectangle for about a second maybe an arch too

Keep up the good work

[Sascha Willems]

Thanks, I hope with "blue screen" you meant that you just saw a blue window? Or did the demo BSOD your system? If that's the case I'm sorry and I'll see what I can do about that.

[martinw]

Nope, not the blue screen of death , just a blue colour in the application window. Not a problem, it's still all very impressive.

P.S. what's SDL ?? Sorry I'm not really a programmer and I see you use Pascal, I haven't used that since university, is it still popular

[Sascha Willems]

SDL = Simple Directmedia Layer ([url=http://www.libsdl.org]link[/url). It's a layer between the OS and stuff like window-management, sound, input etc. So in the end it makes your applications support cross-plattform as you don't use e.g. Win32 calls to create and manage windows and input anymore but rather SDL calls which work on all supported OS'es (which are many).

And yes, Pascal is still very popular, especially in the hobby coding scene. Thanks to Borland's Delphi with it's great IDE and Free Pascal (which supports almost all platforms around) it's still very present and there are many people using it. Sadly there is near zero usage of it in the professional scene (i.e. commercial games).

[martinw]

Thanks Sascha, i'll definitely have a look at SDL and free pascal

[Stucuk]

Problem with languages other than C/C++ is that ppl who don't use them think they are no where near as powerful as C/C++. PPL need to be educated.

The charactor controler demo is definatly not working right. Im also guessing there is no check to see where the mouse is when the program starts so the screen is moved rather than the mouse being "reset".

[Sascha Willems]

I'm using SDL for mouse input, and it works fine for most people. You don't need to reset the mouse cursors, I just wrap it around before it leaves a window border. Maybe SDL wasn't able to get control over the input (which sometimes happen, saw some older apps having the same problem). But I'll take a look into that matter and see what I can do.

[Julio Jerez]

I was recently contacted by Dominique Loius, who maintains the SDL-translations to Pascal if I could do some Newton demos to include with the official JEDI-SDL release. Without wasting a second I agreed and ported all the developer demos that were on my page to use SDL, so they can be compiled under all OS'es that are supported by Pascal+Newton+SDL (which in the end are Win32, Linux and MacOS). So you'll now find all the developer demos on that page are using SDL and moreover I also updated all the demos to use accumulative time-slicing, so they are now all framerate-independent. Right now you can't use them with Linux, as there is only a static library for Linux included in the current SDK. But Julio already told me that there will be a dynamic Library for Linux in the next release (1.35).

As a faithful Master of the dark forces, you are fulfilling your destiny young Sascha. Am I reading this right or I am hallucinating, does it say “JEDI-SDL”, JEDI? hum that theme seem to pop quite frequently on the Newton forums. Very cool and very educative demos for younger the younger apprentices.
Can we get a link to that to check it out?

[Sascha Willems]

*chhh* *chhhh* Ahhhh, I feel a tremor in the Force!

Yes, JEDI is right JEDI in this case stands for Joint Endeavor of Delphi Innovators and is a group that tries to get as many APIs ported to Delphi as possible, of wich JEDI-SDL is one part. This is the URL.

[Sascha Willems]

For all that have problems with the mouse viewing not working in the character controller demo :
Please redownload it (either only the character controller or the packages with all exe-files). The demo now tries to grab and focus the input on the window (using the appropriate SDL functions) and should therefore now work for everyone. If not, please drop me a line here and I'll try to fix.

[Stucuk]

The blue isn't the mouse. The player seem to drop for 1 second then the land disapears.


And the mouse thing. Basicaly u should reset the mouse to the center of the window at the very start. The camera is moving its self depending on where the mouse starts on the screen when the app is ran.

[savage]

SDL_WarpMouse( x, y ) should allow you to reposition the mouse before the screen rendering starts. hmm, not sure if there are any anomoloies between fullscreen and windowed though.

[_Tux_]

there might be a possible problem with NewtonJointSetUserData or NewtonJointGetUserData

im converting the custom joint examples from the SDK and have come across a problem.

in the creation i use NewtonJointSetUserData(FJoint, Self);

i also do exactly the same with NewtonBodySetUserData and it works fine.



when i use

Code: Select all

var
LBaseJoint: TRPBaseJoint;

Begin     
  LBaseJoint := NewtonJointGetUserData(aJoint);

the LBaseJoint is nil...

here is code to show you.

Code: Select all

  TRPBaseJoint = Class(TObject)
  protected
    FMaxDOF: Integer;

    FBody0: PNewtonBody;
    FBody1: PNewtonBody;

    FJoint: PNewtonJoint;
    FWorld: PNewtonWorld;

  public
    constructor Create(aMaxDOF: Integer; aBody0, aBody1: PNewtonBody);
    destructor Destroy;

    procedure CalculateGlobalMatrix(const aLocalMatrix0, aLocalMatrix1: TMatrix; out aMatrix0, aMatrix1: TMatrix);
    procedure CalculateLocalMatrix(const aPivot, aDir: TAffineVector; out aLocalMatrix0, aLocalMatrix1: TMatrix);

    procedure SubmitConstraint; virtual; abstract;
  end;

  TRPJointUpVector = Class(TRPBaseJoint)
  private
    FLocalMatrix0: TMatrix;
    FLocalMatrix1: TMatrix;

  public
    constructor Create(aPin: TAffineVector; aBody: PNewtonBody);

    procedure SetPinDir(const aDir: TAffineVector);

    procedure SubmitConstraint; override;
  end;


function SubmitJointConstraint(const aJoint: PNewtonJoint): Cardinal;
var
LBaseJoint: TRPBaseJoint;

Begin     
  LBaseJoint := NewtonJointGetUserData(aJoint);
  if LBaseJoint <> nil then
    LBaseJoint.SubmitConstraint;
end;


constructor TRPBaseJoint.Create(aMaxDOF: Integer; aBody0, aBody1: PNewtonBody);
Begin
  FBody0 := aBody0;
  FBody1 := aBody1;
  FMaxDOF := aMaxDOF;

  FWorld := NewtonBodyGetWorld(aBody0);
  FJoint := NewtonConstraintCreateUserJoint(FWorld, FMaxDOF, @SubmitJointConstraint, FBody0, FBody1);

  NewtonJointSetUserData(FJoint, Self);
   NewtonJointSetDestructor(FJoint, @JointDestructor);
end;





var
LJoint: TRPBaseJoint;

LJoint := TRPJointUpVector.Create(aPin, aParent);




has anyone else had problems with joint userdata?