[ODE] Nothing but problems with anything involving joints/wheels

[Sponge]

Hi,

I hope I'm sending this mail correctly. These mailinglists always
scare me. So easy to make a mistake, which is submitted to everyone.

I've finally decided to post a message, because I'm getting *really*
frustrated with some of the ODE problems I'm, having. For collisions,
ray intersections, ODE is perfect! It works without any problems, and
everything works perfectly.

I'm using cylinders to make objects navigate around.

So far, so good.

There is just this one unfortunate thing my game involves horses and
horsecarts/trailers. They need to be connected. And this is where the
beauty of ODE turns into a monster.

I have spent *weeks* to get objects connected to each other like a
'car and trailer' (horse and wagon). I have read every single post
using the GMane search
(http://search.gmane.org/?query=&email=&group=gmane.comp.lib.ode&sort=date)

Since the 'trailer' object needs to move around, I think I have to use
wheels/rays. This is already causing problems. Somehwo it just never
works out.

I have tried:

- Sample code (hardcoded stuff :/)
- Carworld (rocket scientist code, hardcoded stuff)
- rayCar (simpler, but still confusing.)
- racer.nl (forgot)

Common problems:

- objects drives badly
- It seems that without wheels (so with rays, or none)  an object
cannot be pulled by another object
- Wheels blowup
- Joints blow up
- Everything blows up. :).

Experimented with:

- Seperate connector bodies which are attached by joint
- Putting wheels under both objects
- All joint types
- A lot of anchor axes (0,1,0 things)
- Doing it manually, without ODE

Personally, I do not really care too much about accurate physics. I
just want an object that moves over my terrain. With a trailing
object. my current "wheels" work.. kinda. I only want to use wheels
for trailing objects, which -cannot-  be directly controlled by
players. I rather not use any wheels at all, but if I have to, I have
to.

I could post thousands of lines of code, with all kinds of tests and
things, and it probably wouldn't help a lot.

I was hoping if anyone could try to give me a few suggestions. Since I
have become total clueless.

Right now I have been working on this problem on and off fore a year
now, and the moment has come to solve this, since horses and wagons
are quite essential in my game. I solved a similar problem with
trains, using a spline which the wagons would follow. Unfortunately, a
train track isfixed, and the path of units isn't.

So, if anyone could please give me some interesting ideas to work
with.. It would be appreciated a lot. I have tried my best to explain
the current situation.

Thanks in advance,

Almar

PS: I hope this mail doesn't get submitted twice, the first time I
wasn't registered, and now I am ;-).