Have you played GTA? I have made a similar engine to GTA using a rectangular polygon driving around the screen. I didn''t like the handling and movements as it was no way realistic to real life. Especially in GTA. The buses, trucks/lorrys don''t drive and move realistically as in real life. the lorry''s front cabin doesn''t turn away from the rear trailer when driving left/right, obviously they are not separate parts. Reversing in a car has a different curve/pattern than driving forward, but GTA doesn''t have this feature because it doesn''t work on a wheels system. I''m wanting to make a 2D Carmageddon car handling based on the wheels system. This means moving a car (rectangular polygon) around the screen by moving the wheels. The wheels move the car body. I''m having problems with the wheels system and find it impossible to implement. Carmageddon did it and I''m wandering if anyone knows how to do it aswell (2D bird''s eye view).

A car will be made up of a rectangular body and four wheels. The rear 2 wheels are fixed and can only drive forward and backwards. The front 2 wheels are fixed but can rotate about it''s centre 45 degrees left/right. If you''ve played Carmageddon then you''ll know what I mean and how SCI did the car handling.

I see your problem. If you were moving a simple space-craft then you can simply rotate the sprite without any forward momentum then add velocity to move it in the direction it is pointing. Agreed?
But consider the way a car moves...
The angle of the front wheels creates a turning arc about which the sprite is rotated. The centre of this arc will be a long way from the actual vehicle - the less steering input the further away it would be. With the space-craft the sprite is always rotated about it''s centre.
If you really want help with the physics of such a game then condsider sharing your project with me. I can code C++ but I''m new to Win and DirectX, maybe we can learn from each other??

Email me.

Regards

Matt