[ODE] PSCL implemented in Rocket

[james at 6msoft.com]

>On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 09:47:02AM +0100, James Arthur wrote:
>> On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 12:03:47 -0700 (PDT), james at 6msoft.com
>> <james at 6msoft.com> wrote:
>> > The language is an attempt at creating an open
>> > standard for physics scene definition in such a way that it's not
bound to
>> > a specific physics engine. The language can be executed from a command
>> > line, from a batch script file, or from within another scripting
language
>> > like Lua, making it extremely robust. There is also importers and
>> > exporters for a XML version of PSCL and KAT.
>>
>> Excellent! This is just what I've been looking for.
>>
>> How easy would it be to hook it in with ODE?
>>
>> James
>
>In a posting to another mailing list, the other developer of PSCL/rocket
>indicated that much of the project will be released in an open-source
>format over the upcoming month(s).  Already, there are some fairly
>detailed docs for PSCL available in windows help format that get installed
>when you install the Rocket demo.
>
>I would be very interested in being involved in an attempt to get ODE
>working
>with PSCL, once the next iteration of the PSCL is released.

Best way to answer this is to paraphrase an email John Ratcliff forwarded
me...

In theory, we are going to be open sourcing the project and likely hosting
it on Source Forge. For those interested in being more involved in the
project I can see about getting an early version of the PSCL source code
out to you.

Rocket it self uses a collection of four DLLs known as "Open Dynamics
Framework".

NxToolkit.DLL         : Loads mesh, skeleton, and animation data and
produces dynamics models from them.
PSCL.DLL              : The PSCL parser.
NXPSCL.DLL            : The Novodex implementation of the physics
interface PSCL uses to instantiate scenes interactively. This is where you
could add an ODE interface, Havok interface, or your own home brew.
PSSCRIPT.DLL          : A DLL that provides scripted bindings to PSCL. 
This implementation is Lua.  The idea is that you can bind PSCL to any
scripting language so long as you provide a few basic services.

In the past PSCL has been tested with (I think) four different physics
engines, including ODE, so it can work. Though, a long time ago, so the
implementations are synced with the current language spec.

Let me know if you have any more questions or comments.

-James Dolan