2025-06-12
sorry for the lack of updates... for the last month or so i've been head-down working on implementing Jolt Physics into the FTEQW engine.
i've kinda been keeping quiet about it because i wanted to "drop it" all at once when i had a playable demo ready for people to download, but alas... the progress has kinda slowed down so i don't have anything cool like that yet.
so this is me writing a bit about it!!
FTEQW already has an interface for integrating a rigidbody physics engine, due to its past support of both the ODE and Bullet physics engines. i found both of these integrations pretty unsatisfactory, though, and i thought Jolt Physics could do better while using the same plugin interface. it took some tinkering and hacking (and learning a lot about C++ on the fly) but i got a working implementation after a few days. since then i've just been trying to cut down on crashes and Jolt error asserts. fun!
but really though, it's been pretty rewarding! i absolutely love good physic engines in games due to me being a big Half-Life 2 nerd. so working towards getting a really solid physics engine available for my own game projects has been kinda exhilerating.
despite that, i'm already running out of things to say about it, umm...
in other related news, i've been replaying Half-Life 2 a lot the past week or so. just jumping into it and playing random chapters and levels (out of order) to get a feel for how the physics are paired with the gameplay, and how the physics engine feels in an FPS setting. i might love this game too much.
ALSO!!
you can get an early demo playground of the "Jolt Physics in FTEQW" project on my Patreon!
thank you all for your continued support!