1.0.0

🎉 Major Rewrite!

After wrapping up last year's term, I started rewriting Nova in summer break. The API is now rehauled, more consistent, easier to use and the general performance is a touch better. There are also quite a few big additions.

Highlights

• Compound shapes
  • Now it is possible to have multiple shapes per body. Allowing for much complex scenes.
• Constraints
  • Upgraded all constraints APIs.
  • Distance constraint now can be a soft-constraint which allows for spring behaviour.
  • New constraint: Spline path.
• Better contact caching
  • Fixed all bugs related to contact caching & warmstarting.
  • There are also now three contact events you can listen to.
• Better error handling
  • Most functions now returns a documented status integer that you can check for errors.
  • nv_get_error to get the last error message.
• And many more!

Changelog

The rewrite is too big to list all changes here, so you can browse the commits from rewrite branch start to merge.
Full changelog: 0.7.0...1.0.0

0.7.0

Happy late new year! 🥳

Nova Physics is back with a massive optimization update!

Highlights 🌟

• Collision detection optimizations.
  • AABB caching.
  • Polygon transformed vertices caching.
• SIMD enhancements.
  • Nova now uses AVX operations for integrating velocities & positions. Even though this might not have a huge impact on the overall performance, it's a start for vectorizing all simulation components!
• Multi-threading!
  • A very experimental module that utilizes OS-threads to schedule tasks. This is only used to parallelize SHG for now.
  • This is pretty inconsistent on Linux.
• Huge API changes.
  • Now the whole codebase uses nvStruct and nvEnum namings for every struct and enum.
  • Helper functions for body creation is now gone. You have to create shapes manually and pass them. Although, there is new better shape API.

Fixes

• Fixed the bug where attractive forces behaved differently with substeps.
• Fixed platform error messages in build script.
• All broad-phase warnings are gone.
• Fixed Fedora segfault in exampel demos.

Changelog

• Improved constraints API for expandability.
• New constraint: Hinge joint.
• Added descriptions in constants.h (and few new constants).
• nvBody_reset_velocities method for clearing body's velocities.
• nvArray_clear method.
• Tracy profiler support.
  • Build with --enable-tracy argument to start profiling with Tracy.
• Renamed nvBroadPhaseAlg_... enum for readability.
• New polygon functions:
  • Convex hull generation now uses Graham Scan algorithm. Which should be faster than the previous Gift Wrapping implementation.
  • Winding order function.
• Build system is rewritten.
  • Object file caching for faster compilation times.
  • Better dependency management.
  • Better CLI and argument parsing.
  • Animated progress bar for downloading dependencies.
  • Better and more extendible compiler support.
  • --target=... argument for targeting a specific compiler.
  • --no-profiler argument for disabling built-in profiler.
  • --no-simd argument for disabling usage of SIMD intrinsics.
  • It is now possible to build & run unit tests.
• Example system reworked.
  • Now all examples demos can be viewed from the same window.
  • Each example demo has its own settings.
  • Code should be easier to read and extend.
• Benchmark base refactored.

Full changelog: 0.6.0...0.7.0

0.6.0

Highlights 🌟

• Build script now supports parallel compiling and Visual Studio build tools.
• Reworked current constraints API and solvers. They are more stable.
• Shape factory methods for generating convex hulls or other common shapes.
• Groups, categories and masks for filtering collisions.

Issue Fixes

• Fixed the long standing impulse caching bug where systems with high restitution instantly exploded.
• Fixed Linux warnings for example_base.h.
• Space now has an internal ID counter to avoid same IDs getting assigned to bodies after removing and adding.

Changes & Additions

• New examples added: cloth.c and hull.c
  • Also improved some other examples.
• Reworked the examples README page, and the demo UI.
• In the collision resolutions, nv_Contant struct is now used to store contact point information.
• Bodies now have gravity_scale attribute that indicates how are they affected by gravity.
• Shape factory functions.
  • nv_ShapeFactory_Rect & Box to create rectangle shapes.
  • nv_ShapeFactory_NGon to create regular n-gon shapes.
  • nv_ShapeFactory_ConvexHull to create a convex hull from an array of points.
• nv_Space_set_broadphase method to change the current broadphase algorithm.
• Collision groups, categories and masks to filter which bodies collide with each other.
  • nv_Body.collision_group, nv_Body.collision_category and nv_Body.collision_mask are 32-bit unsigned integers, last two are used as bitmasks.
• Parallel build support for GCC in the build script for faster compilation time and MSVC support.
  • Use the -j<n> option to set the number of processed fired to n
  • Use the -x option to target MSVC.
• Constraints are moved to their own modules.
• Constraints now link to the world by passing NULL to body parameter. The anchor point should be changed to world-space.
• Improved current constraint solvers.
• Math module is now only header-only.
• nv_Profiler structs hold information about simulation's various profiling data.
• The documentation is improved and started to write getting started section.

0.5.2

Updatelog

• Improved collision persistance.
  • Completely reworked the hash map implementation.
  • Fixed SHG losing collision persistance. However this affects the performance.
  • New nv_Space.collision_persistance attribute defines the number of frames a collision resolution stays alive for.
• New methods nv_Space_remove & nv_Space_kill
• Added kill boundaries (nv_Space.kill_bounds & nv_Space.use_kill_bounds).
• New examples: varying_friction.c and domino.c
• Matrix API has been refactored and moved to its own header.
• Improved docs.
• Better platform detection in nova_builder.py build script.

0.5.1

Updatelog

• Fixed Manjaro & MSVC compile errors and warnings.
• Consistent use of Nova integer types along the codebase.
• Improved documentation

0.5.0

Highlights 🌟

• Improved broad-phase!
  • Nova Physics now has a Spatial Hash Grid implementation.
• Body shapes.
  • Now shapes has their own interface. This makes it easier to have multiple shapes and concave polygons in the future.
• Improved contact point generation.

Updatelog

• There are two separate broad-phase algorithms now. SHG (Spatial Hash Grid) and Brute-force. Developer can choose whichever they want.
  • nv_BroadPhase_SPATIAL_HASH_GRID & nv_BroadPhase_BRUTE_FORCE.
• New shape interface with nv_Shape & nv_ShapeType.
• Polygon contact generation now uses polygon clipping for more accurate contact points.
• Presolver functions in the solver API has been renamed to nv_presolve_...
• Most, if not all, of the compiler warnings are fixed.
• New example fountain.c.
  • Also improved all examples.
• Improved documentation..

0.4.0

What's new? 🎉

• New Vector2 API.
  • Utility macros like NV_VEC2(), NV_VEC2_NEW, NV_TO_VEC2, NV_TO_VEC2P
• Nova Physics now uses an iterative sequential impulse solver with accumulated impulses.
  • This greaaatly increases the collision resolution stability and helps performance with reduced substeps.
  • Erin Catto has great presentations about the topic: GDC 2005 & GDC 2006.
• A custom build system for Nova Physics that simplifies everything.
  • Learn how to use it here.

Updatelog

• Nova Physics now uses a custom floating point type nv_float which can be configured while building by the developer.
• Solver can be configured to use different functions for coefficient mixing.
• nv_Body_apply_impulse (and nv_Body_apply_pseudo_impulse) methods are used in the solver.
• nv_Space_clear method to clear all the Space content.
• nv_Space -> warmstarting field to toggle warm-starting accumulated impulses.
• Improved example base and new examples demos.
• Improved sleeping.
  • nv_Space -> sleep_energy_threshold field to determine sleeping energy threshold
  • nv_Space -> sleep_timer_threshold field to determine sleeping time threshold
  • nv_Space -> wake_energy_threshold field to determine waking energy threshold

0.3.1

Changes

• Fixed orbit.c example
• New example previews
• Updated docs

0.3.0

Changes

• New material API for setting bodies' material properties like density, friction, etc..
  • nv_Material struct and presets like nv_Material_STEEL, nv_Material_WOOD, etc..
• Constraint support and solvers
  • New constraint: Spring! 🎉
• New examples and improved example base
• Bugs & function documentation fixes

0.2.0

First stable release

General changes

• Attractive forces
• Bodies now have is_attractor attribute
• build.py for generating development libraries
• internal.h for resolving circular includes
• New example orbit.c, showcasing attractive forces