Simulation of a trebuchet with Irrlicht

[JanVanHaaren]

Hello guys!

I'm new on this board so here's a small introduction. I'm seventeen years old and live in the north of Belgium. For a school project I want to simulate a medieval trebuchet using the Irrlicht graphics engine.

I have read a lot about this engine and I think it suits very well my expectations. These expectations are good graphics and not too difficult in usage.

As you probably already have noticed I don't have any experience with Irrlicht so far. That's why I hope some more experienced users can reply on the next couple of questions:

1. Is Irrlicht a 'good' engine to simulate a working medieval trebuchet?
2. Is there any other Irrlicht project in progress which has trebuchets included?

I'm kind of new on graphics and game engines, but I do have some C++ experience. I hope someone is willing to respond to my questions.

Thanks in advance.

PS: I'm sorry for my bad English, English isn't my mother tongue.

[pfo]

Irrlicht is a graphics engine, as such by itself, you could design a trebuchet in a 3d modelling program, and Irrlicht would display it nicely, however, you would have to write the code that would control the trebuchet. You can find some physics engines on the 'net, and integrate them with Irrlicht, however at that point you'd be getting into quite a bit of work for a school project.

[Guest]

If its just a trebuchet you won't need lightmaps. So until you are a very smart programmer you might be better off using Blenders Game engine for that. You can relatively easy make a lot of nice interactive stuff with Blenders logic bricks. Its extremely powerful for interaction and much less work than programming everything from scratch. Plus if its only a small scene you could even bake the lighting into one and the same texture. Than it will be hard to tell the difference between Irrlicht and Blenders GE.

Concerning the 3D-model, i would get one off the net and remodel it using Subsurfs in Blender, better detail handling and the copy right is yours then.

Nice idea by the way, please post a demo here.

Cheers

[Guest]

Thanks both for your replies.

I have been crawling the net for a couple of hours now and I have some good free resources of 3d models. But, you can already guss, not a 3d model of a trebuchet.

About my choice to use Irrlicht. I want to learn something about this graphics engine (and graphics engines in general) so I really would like to use it.

Thanks!

[JanVanHaaren]

Excuse me, that was me, but I forgot to log in.

[MikeR]

If you are talking about a catapult, you will most likely need a physics engine or a modeling program that will make animations.
Irrlicht will play animations if you are just making something for show. If you want more interactivity, you'll need a physics engine. (added to irrlicht)

[Guest]

http://www.baument.com/Models/Trebuchet1.zip
As i already said you have to remodel it from scratch as its copyrighted. The simulation of the rope is pretty ambitious and more suited for a thesis. You need to be a very smart pupil if we ever
happen to see your demo. Have fun.

[Guest]

Hmm, i just rechecked the link and it does not work directly (damn moneymakers). You need to enter their website choose Archive from top menu and scroll way down. Alsjeblieft

[trekker]

Hi

This may be of interest to you, It's not a trebuchet but a sim program of a catapult. The site is not in English but you can download the program and play with the catapult. The keys are listed on the site and you have to play around with them to figure out what they do (if you can not read the native language). Appears that 'W' loads the cat, 'A' pulls it back, 'Q' releases, 'H' and 'K' turn.

http://panoramix.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~dobrz ... lt_v12.htm

May give you some ideas.

-trek