C Programmer
- +Project Type: SDL2 Custom Toy Engine
+Project Timeframe: 2023
++ The goal of the project was to build, from theory and whitepapers, a simple 2d physics engine that can be used to make games. Mainly as a practice project to teach myself the basics of how physics engines work. +
++ (Linked text directs to the relevant spot in + the code repository) +
++ The start of the project was building a 2-body arbitrary shape collision solver. For this I used the + Separating Axis Theorem, + as it is relatively simple to implement. +
++ With a working 2-body solver in hand, the next step was to implement an iterative multi-body solver. But this requires a lot more than a toy SAT implementation. So first I went and figured out world and object representations. +
++ Although I really like using C for quick toy examples, I had now reached the point at which I usually switch to C++, and in hindsight that would've probably been the better option. However, my recent explorations of Rust meant that I had learned of the joy of "Trait"-style polymorphism (most comparable to C++ interfaces). So I wanted to try using those in C. For this I found an approach to implementing typeclasses in C (the article for which isn't online anymore, but I explained my version over on + my blog). +
+
+ The requirements for any game object to be part of the physics world is that it has to at least implement
+ PhysicsEntity,
+ which in turn requires
+ Transformable
+ to be implemented. As solving collisions requires modifying the transform of the object.
+ In order to be rendered, and for the update function to be called, the object also has to implement
+ BehaviourEntity,
+ which exposes the object lifetime functions spawn, update, start, and draw. And itself requires
+ Drop
+ to be implemented. Drop being pretty much the best destructor implementation you can get in C without implementing a garbage collector.
+
+ With the world represented, the work on the collision solver could start. Objects that implement PhysicsEntity can then register themselves with the
+ physics world.
+ Once an object is registered to the physics world it will use the SAT to check for collisions, and finally, that comes to the multi-body iterative collision solver.
+
+ The iterative solver
+ is implemented in the static functions of the PhysicsEntity typeclass.
+
+ This all then comes together in something like the
+ Player
+ struct, which implements all these typeclasses and uses them to create a platformer character. Or the
+ Tilemap
+ object that can be loaded from LDTK levels to create a renderable physics entity that can be hit and interacted with by the player.
+
Project Type: Engine, Genre, Application
+Project Timeframe: Length, Year
++ Description of the game. +
+ ++ Description of role in development. +
+Thoughts on the development process and what I learned from it.
+