So yesterday I finally finished getting motorized and limited joints to work in my NewtonPlayGround. This means that hinges and universals can now not only be motorized but they also can be limited and the motor then will change it’s direction after one of the limits is reached. This is especially interesting for creating complexer walkers which e.g. have a walk cycle. So on a quick test I put together a humanoid walker that almost walks on two legs using those motorized and limited joints. Although I know exactly nothing about humanoid robotics it’s almost able to walk and was done in less than 5 minutes using my NewtonPlayGround. If you’re interested ins seeing it moving, head over to this thread on the newton forums to get more informations, a screenshot and a video. So now that almost all features I wanted to have are in and in a finished state I started writing the manual. But since the NewtonPlayGround is so complex and since you can do so much stuff with it, it really turns out to be a hard task. So I’m kind of struggling with how to structure the manual, but hopefully I’ll get this done more or less right.
On another side-note I received my copy of the Warhammer 40k : Dawn Of War - Addon called “Winter Assault” this morning. I must admit that Dawn of War (and the Add-On too, after playing some missions) was (and still is with this Add-On) one of the very very few commercial games that I really enjoyed this year. I played many recent games and demos (Age Of Empires III, Serious Sam 2, BloodRayne2, F.E.A.R.) and none of them really could divert me longer than half an hour. So either I’m getting too old, or PC gaming is getting too mainstream to attract “old” players (well, I’m just 24) anylonger.