[ODE] What's the best way to incorporate ODE into an already existing game engine?

[Nicholas Lawson]

Hi all.

I'd like to get ODE up and working inside the game engine I've been working
on for a long time.  The engine already has collision detection and response
in it, but its hand coded vector style and only works on spheres and clumps
of spheres instead of nice integrated 'true' rigid body physics.  What I'm
more worried about though, is speed.  The game levels in the game consist of
a varied assortment of brushes - that is, convex hulls, of which I know the
planes, the triangles, whatever else I need to know.  They're already up in
a loose quad-tree structure, limiting the number of checks to a very small
amount.

So I guess my question is, can ODE work nicely (and quickly) for collisions
of objects (sphere/square/cylinder CLUMPS) against (large numbers of) static
immovable 'brush' type convex hulls, or am I barking up the wrong tree
entirely with ODE?  I haven't quite managed to get it up and running yet
beyond the initial examples and it looks like it could work well, but I'm
worried about if I'd be using the wrong physics engine for the job.

Note that this is not a FPS that I'm speaking about - more a platform style
third person game, with many of them obligatory explosions and flying
people, which is why I'm interested in the rag-doll possibilities in ODE
also.

-Nick