DRD Team

Hey all

First timer and first post, so mods forgive me if I break anything.
Hypothetically speaking - if we were to remove whatever physics GZdoom uses in its current form (or maybe just disable it as much as we can) and pair it with a Physics Library would it make more sense to use something like Chipmunk2D/Box2D ? Or something like ODE/Bullet? Personally I'm *not* interested in things like Ragdoll physics (e.g. just the bodies flailing about...although that would be great) but more how things would react like tables, crates, projectiles etc.

My question stems from confusion over the whole "Doom is a 2.5D" thing - Assuming the mass painstaking task of convering the code to accept a library is done - which one would be a better fit?

3D, definitely. There's no way 2D physics could work. Sure, a Doom map is 2D plan with elevation, but inside actors move in 3D; and besides there are 3D floors.

2D physics are usually for stuff seen from the side, so you get a top-down axis and a left-right axis. Notably there's gravity as part of the physics. The 2D part of Doom is horizontal, there's a north-south axis and an east-west axis. Even if you flattened the map to do away with the ".5D" of the up-down axis, you'd still get something that isn't adapted to 2D physics, because for instance things don't "fall" toward the south.

Thanks Gez, This is exactly the answer I needed!