I actually think that it is common to use a physics engine and optimized collision geometry for everything. Especially for bigger productions than hobby projects.

Well even iphone games for example made with Unity uses Physics and even some great RPG adventure semi open world runs great
with it

So well , no problem for Hobbyst projects even on small systems as Iphone.
For PC , it have lot of power to really handle physics without problems, even on low PC. Even old AAA games used Physics.

So yes, for my part if i can have primitives, world, Ray trace
made with Nvidia Physics i'll do it !

Well just my opinion !



For

PhysX needs to be installed first.
its not set up on many systems,

Good luck to get casual User Lucy to search, download and install a dangerous driver
to run a small Indy Game.

Its easier for her to click "next entry".

Using PhysX is overkill for many hobby games.
Requiering something extra to be installed is a deathnote.
(Its not Crysis or WoW, people will have very little patiance with a small Indy game)

The whole point Why Apple (iPhone etc) is so successful is because of
the design philosophy "It just works", for their products and software.

For simple games for simple puzzle, adventure games for lambda user i odn't think they expect great physics and A8 system is sufficient in this case.

FPS for example games are not for really lambda people , but more for people that like FPS games and lot of time, paly today FPS games. SO in that case no problem with Physix install !

Even some AAA RPG ask to install additionnal package like Physix and others.

In fact it really depends on your game type and the type of people you target to use or not Physix.
If really casual , not core gamer, well you can avoid i'm sure
Physix caus they don't exepect accurate or incredible simulation.

Once again is all up to you to decide

Yesterday I got curious and started making a test game with Gamestudio. In the game, the player entity uses a "collision mask" entity, that's shaped like a box and has its POLYGON flag set.

Unfortunately, I discovered that when other entities use c_move() for collision detection, they *always* perform collision detection as an ellipsoid, regardless of whether or not their POLYGON flag is set.

wwwwwhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyy

use kniematic physics entites.

@Redeemer: JCL once said (and its also written in the manual) that you shall not use the polygon flag for dynamic (moving) entities.

"should not" does not mean the same thing as "cannot". JCL makes several recommendations and suggestions for the layout of your code in the manual, but not all of them are good advice (in my opinion).


Honestly, I'd really rather not have to resort to using a full blown physics engine when all I want to do is make a proper box trace across the level.

Honestly, I really don't like that jcl's isn't interested in community needs... I even hate that.
Same situation was with skills and "c_ignore" for A7, but ok, A7 wasn't supported (old version).
Now, there are a lot of users are asking for implementing different BBOX shapes, with good reasons...
We saying that ellipsoid isn't good for our needs! We don't want to use physics for our needs!
We made good examples, to explain all problems we face with ellipsoid BBOX, but is there any sense?!
WHY CAN'T WE GET ANY SUPPORT FROM HIM?! HE SEEMS ONLY IMPLEMENTING STAFF THAT HE LIKES!

[/rage]

I agree. I think the reason was because "complex" objects can get hooked on each other, however a box is not complex at all. I've used this method in A7, with no performance hits (that I noticed), and worked the same in A8. I mainly did this because of the way entity vs entity collisions are handled. My ultimate solution was to look at other engines, as I need to focus on my projects.