Getting a Simulation

[Greg]

Hey all,

So here's my deal. I was the physics guy in a short lived programming
team in college. That means I was the Mechanical Engineer amidst a
group of programmers. I had dabbled in simplistic stuff, but mostly
controls applications, but we wanted to build a game, so I learned
ODE. I got decent with ODE, but have zero understanding of how the
rest of it all worked; it might as well have been voodoo. Well, when
marriages sent half the team to Sweden and Japan, the whole thing fell
apart. But I really enjoyed what we were doing and would like to pick
it back up. The problem is that code is gone now, so I dont have my
starting point to work from, or the understanding to get back to it.

All that was just to make you understand the level of idiocy I
currently reside in with all things not immediately ODE. Can somebody
here give me a step by step instruction for getting some of the
included demos working? I've installed Visual Studio Express 2008 on
an xp box. I have used premake to build the project files etc, (with
demos and tests) But there is something Im supposed to do to link(?)
the libraries in Visual studio? Do I need to install OpenGl or some
other libraries like that? What will it take to get me from here to
an actual bouncing ball on my screen?

Help me, oh guru's of Ye Internets

[Danny Price]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:26 AM, Greg <gregle...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey all,

So here's my deal.  I was the physics guy in a short lived programming
team in college.  That means I was the Mechanical Engineer amidst a
group of programmers.  I had dabbled in simplistic stuff, but mostly
controls applications, but we wanted to build a game, so I learned
ODE.  I got decent with ODE, but have zero understanding of how the
rest of it all worked; it might as well have been voodoo.   Well, when
marriages sent half the team to Sweden and Japan, the whole thing fell
apart.  But I really enjoyed what we were doing and would like to pick
it back up.  The problem is that code is gone now, so I dont have my
starting point to work from, or the understanding to get back to it.

I feel your pain.
 

All that was just to make you understand the level of idiocy I
currently reside in with all things not immediately ODE.  Can somebody
here give me a step by step instruction for getting some of the
included demos working?  I've installed Visual Studio Express 2008 on
an xp box.  I have used premake to build the project files etc, (with
demos and tests)  But there is something Im supposed to do to link(?)
the libraries in Visual studio?  Do I need to install OpenGl or some
other libraries like that?  What will it take to get me from here to
an actual bouncing ball on my screen?

Help me, oh guru's of Ye Internets

Trying to use VisualStudio right away is only going to complicate things if you're not familiar with it. Getting started with ODE is easier on unix systems because it's easier to get everything running. Ordinarily I would suggest you download MinGW and use that to configure and make ODE and the examples but you say you've already used premake? Did you use nmake?

You should not need to install OpenGL. Unless you system is seriously out of date (you're still using XP?!)  you should have GL 1.x. You probably won't have GLUT but it's not used by the ODE examples. Only Drawstuff (a graphics engine for running the examples) uses OpenGL - the rest is just standard C++.

If you did everything right, the examples should all be built and ready to go from Explorer or the command line. Then it's a case of studing the examples and then building your own projects in VS, linking against the ODE library.


 

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[Bruce Veazie]

I have Visual Studio 2008 (full version) and got ODE to run "out of the box," having otherwise compiled the libs and dlls. Yeah, I'm familiar with setting up projects but it's not so difficult I'd recommend going to a different platform to get it running! Often, it's just a matter of paying attention to any compiler complaints ("hinge.h not found" etc.).

 

I'm hoping MVS2008 Express is similar enough to the full version that the following will be applicable. This is for setting up a project that uses ODE, not loading a 2003 solution. You *may* be able to convert a solution to 2008 and use the following to get it running.

 

Since you have the libraries and dlls, set the project properties as follows (for double precision debug version):

 

"c:\ode" should be whereever your ode directory is.

 

Configuration Properties->C/C++->Additional Include Directories : c:\ode\include; c:\ode\include\ode; c:\ode\src

Configuration Properites->Linker->Additional Library Directories: c:\ode\lib\debugdoubledll

Configuration Properites->Linker->Additional Dependencies: ode_doubled.lib

 

In the stdafx.h file: (depending on whether you're using single or double version)

#undef dSINGLE

#define dDOUBLE

#include <ode/ode.h>

 

If that's not complete, it'll get you very close.

 

That, of course, doesn't include any graphics libraries.

 

Bruce