I am part of the gameplay team. The goal was to make it possible for us to control a cube’s movement, and add basic physics like velocity and gravity. My personal goal was to check whether we should write our own physics or use a physics library.
I was able to look into the physics libraries available, especially Bullet since it is what all the groups from previous years (those who used a physics library) recommended. The general suggestion is that if there are lots of collisions involved, the library can handle collision detection well. However, the downside is the learning curve required to understand their code. Since we are not expecting many collisions in our gameplay, we decided to write our own physics engine.
So far we are on track. We have a simple cube moving around, controlled by keyboard (WASD and space for jump).
To allow the camera to follow the movement of the cube, so that the third person view is consistent throughout gameplay.
I tried out Bullet and explored how it works. I expected to learn this while researching physics engines.
Good.