Just finished a custom platform-oriented physics engine for JME after trying to get JBullet to work properly.  I’m seeing better framerates too (in the hundreds, versus in the tens with JBullet), at least with a reasonable amount of moving objects. When the movable objects and fixed platforms start reaching into hundreds the framerate drops, as I’m using a brute force search at the moment (O(n^2)).  Could be improved with some simple optimizations (don’t check collisions for stationary objects or objects that have fallen out of the map).  Probably I could have gotten JBullet to work too, but I’d rather spend the time implementing a simple solution I can understand and tweak, than reading manuals and debugging external frameworks.

Visually the game hasn’t changed much, except I added in lighting.  The spheres look positively yummy with a bit of shininess and lights from two directions.   I’m dedicating tomorrow to content creation and gameplay implementation.  The goal of the game will be simple, move from a spawnpoint to a goal-portal on each level, by jumping between floating platforms, and avoiding/fighting some kind of enemies.  If I have time I’ll add some companion for the player to protect / escort.

On the tuning side the my scalaprops library is turning out to be very practical, it allows tuning of game parameters interactively which will be a real timesaver when digging into the content creation.  It will need a bit of additional work to comfortably display all the settings though.