I've been having the time of my life trying to figure out how flatland works, and so far I got a basic model with a bunch of bouncing blocks setup. The type of game I want to design is your typical sidescroller. Little to no rotation involved, collision detection, and character movement. Now because Flatland isn't really documented very well, I'm not sure how to approach setting up my structures to modify the output of the engine. I could probably handle moving by shifting the center point of the object, but that still leaves me with jumping and applying a force on the object. From what I've read of the doxygen generated page there isn't an easy way to do any of this. Am I missing something?

Alright, I got everything solved up to a point. What I'm trying to do is have all of the players in this 2D sidescroller work as if they're frictionless. I'm able to manipulate the object through ODE calls, so I can apply velocity and force to an object. However I can't manipulate the friction of an object at all. Flatland handles this through the ContactList::Finalize()



It at least provides some calculation of friction, however when I change the property to have no friction it does nothing.

I re-rotate to 0 deg the block so I don't have the block acting like a wheel. This way I can have a character always standing up. Instead of moving the position of the object for the character I use velocity to push the object. This way I let the physics engine deal with collision instead of passing through a testable wall. However when velocity is applied horizontally the object hops. Changing the friction on all the objects doesn't help the hopping any.

I assume that the hopping comes from the re-rotation of the object, when the object is tested it gets rotated due to the friction on the surface. When the object is rotated back to 0 it has a little lift. But I'm setting the friction to 0, it should technically glide over the surface.

Anyone know flatland or ODE well enough to help me with this?

Flatland