Kolf: Using ODE, and preparing for Summer of Code

Blogging fever seems to have infected me, too. And I’m getting tired of the “The week in” titles because they’re occuring so often, so I’ll drop that meme now.

In other news, I have over the last week been busy to port Kolf to use the Open Dynamics Engine. I originally planned to let the old homegrown collision engine work while the ODE support is being prepared, but it turned out that I had to make more intrusive changes that did not allow for a coexistence. So ODE is now required, and it seems to work out very well. I had to do quite some work before any results become visible, but the work pays off: Every object is now three-dimensional (internally!!), and collision works again for most objects (not walls). I still have to make the ball stop, there is no friction currently, but things start to shape up.

And now for something completely different: For this Google’s Summer of Code, I offer two projects about Kolf 2. This is your chance if you want to start contributing to kdegames. Games are often underestimated, but it takes you more than just moving some graphics around. For example, you could be creating the editor interface for Kolf 2, taking advantage of the generic infrastructure that Kolf 2 already provides. If you’re visiting CeBIT, you can also meet the complete Kolf 2 developer team (read as: both folks) at the KDE booth in hall 6 to discuss your GSoC ideas.

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