[ODE] Creating a 2d wrapper class around the ODE lib

[David Walters]

> My name is Donald May, and I wanted to inform you all that I have been
> working on a 2d wrapper for the ODE framework for a project of mine, and I
> am going to be making it open source when I am done :).

First off, that demo was excellent and really amusing to play around
with! I found it really inspirational to see working in such a stable
manner and immediately possibilities for platform games and puzzlers
sprung to mind.

btw. If you're looking for suggested new features, i'd say that if you
could add some kind of 2D polygon primitive (a closed line list) -
either convex only, or with concave support - then this would be very
very powerful and perfect for any use I can think of.

How much of your code would you say is appropriate for integration
into ODE? Is it something that you can build on top of ODE or does it
involve manual integration of a lot of stuff?

To the community: What is the feeling about adding 2D support to ODE?

My gut reaction is I would make 2D versions of the collision space
classes that can only contain 2D objects. This would be flexible
enough to allowing you to have a 3D dynamic world with an isolated 2D
"fish tank" in it.

I think this is probably the way to go - that way you could add 2D
only features (prims and joints) to ODE but they wouldn't work unless
added to the correct space... I'm assuming that 2D / 3D interactions
aren't allowed, they don't seem to make sense assuming the primitives
either have zero or inifinite thickness? or is it an arbitrary
thickness? it still seems like a weird interaction...

Anyway I'd be willing to work with you on an integration project now
that heightfields (with the exception of trimesh collisions, which
I've not forgotten about) are pretty much done. Donald, would you be
alright with that once you've worked on your short-term improvements?
We'll have to see what the community feels about this...

Regards,
Dave