General Collision Detection for Games Using Ellipsoids
I spent some time this weekend combing through my code to try to find my mistakes. I found them and fixed them. Long story short, with the exception of adding one parallel check to abort computations if a collision could never occur (which is necessary or anomalies will appear), his pseudo-code is correct. I have implemented it fully and it works just as advertised.
In fact, his article is the best I have seen in regards to implementing sliding plane collision detection. It is still used widely in games today (i.e. Oblivion) and works really well with human shaped ellipsoids.
I went on a shopping spree also. I ordered the following books and games from Amazon:
Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics Second Edition
Real-Time Rendering (2nd Edition)
OpenGL(R) Shading Language
OpenGL(R) Programming Guide : The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL(R), Version 2 (5th Edition)
and I saw Night of the Raven was finally translated to English, so although I still own the original Gothic II, I ordered this to get the expansion...
Gothic 2 Gold
I wrote the pseudo-code for a quad-tree to sort my collision detection geometry. I also pulled down a few frustum culling papers that I will leverage to cull the actual scene geometry. These are the two coding events that will occur next in my engine.
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On the gaming front, I was able to play a little bit of Oblivion. I am amazed at the technology every time I play this. It is quite possibly the best RPG to date. I also played a little online of Fight Night 3 on the 360, which is also a wonderful game, with my brother that lives in D.C.
I recently hooked up my PC (which is in my office) to my home theater (that is in my living room). The whole project involved drilling through the floor several times, crawling around under the house running cables, and once nearly receiving a concussion when a huge oak piece of my home theater cabinet crashed into my skull.
But I have it hooked up now and even bought an Adaptoid for much more money that I should have spent on one. Ever heard of an adaptoid? It basically allows you to make your old Nintendo 64 into a programmable PC joystick. It is a wonderful device that is no longer being produced. So if you want one, you have to compete with the rest of the geeks on eBay. But the experience playing the original Golden Ax emulated through Mame on my big screen and surround sound with the N64 joystick is priceless. :)
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