These technology demos were released in 2000 to showcase the MathEngine physics engine and Intel Pentium 4 processor.
There are two versions:
The Original version was released in early 2000 to showcase MathEngine, showing off the core features of the physics engine.
The Intel demo was released in late 2000 to showcase the Intel Pentium 4 processor and showed some more advanced features of MathEngine including ragdolls, cloth and water boyancy. This 777D version also used a custom version of MathEngine that was optimised with SSE2 instructions for improved performance.
Now in 2024, you may not of heard of MathEngine but it was one of the first commercially available physics engines, released at GDC 2000 alongside Havok. It was available for licensing until around 2003 when the company was purchased by Criterion software (EA) and became part of their Renderware Engine. Both of these disappeared a few years later when Renderware failed to take off.
The KarmaUserGuide.pdf in this repo file gives a good overview of the MathEngine 'Karma' physics engine as it was in 2002. A slightly more advanced version to the one included in the Actor demo with more extensive optimisations that had been applied over the years.
Although MathEngine was a closed source project, one of its developers, Russell Smith, released an open source physics engine called 'ODE' (Open Dynamics Engine) which uses the same underlying principles as MathEngine. In fact you could consider MathEngine as an optimised, commercial version of ODE. https://www.ode.org/.
For the full story of the development of these demos you can read about them in Mev's autobiography - Life Is A Game. https://mevdinc.com/
This repo contains pre-build exe's for Windows only. Other platforms are not supported and I no longer have access to the source to rebuild them. Since it was written at a time when processors ran in MHz rather than Ghz and GPUs had MBs of memory rather than GBs, it will likely run on pretty much any PC or laptop these days.
Start either demo by running the Actor.exe in the Bin folder. E.g. run 'ActorDemoIntel\Bin\Actor.exe' to start the Intel demo.
You'll first see a dialog allowing a GPU device to be selected (default is likely to be fine). Click OK to start the demo which should run fullscreen.
Keys...
Press F1 for interactive help.
TAB Toggle frame rate display
ENTER Reset whole scene
CTRL + M Reset mirror
CTRL + D Reset dummy
Space Throw object/Hit pool ball
Shift + LMB Fly towards pointer
Shift + RMB Fly away from pointer
V Toggle pointer follow on/off
B Throw bomb
G Toggle gravity on/off
F Follow rat on/off
Arrow keys Rotate dragged object
Hold CTRL Pick pool balls
Escape Quit demo
CTRL + I Re-trigger intro sequence
CTRL + S Save the current state of the scene
CTRL + L Load a saved scene
Drag with LMB to move objects left/right, up and down.
Drag with LMB + RMB to move objects left/right, in and out.
Whilst dragging an object...
Arrow keys Rotate object
CTRL + Arrows .. ..
CTRL + A Pin the dragged object point in space (see below)
Character Keys...
Arrow keys Move character
Page Up/Down Cycle character animations
Space Execute current animation
CTRL+1 Trigger dummy sequence (preset camera)
ALT+1 Trigger dummy sequence (current camera)
Other controls...
. Click and drag on pool balls to enter 'pool mode'; use space bar to hit balls.
. Click on pool table coin slot to re-rack balls.
. Click on switches to turn on/off pool light or video projector.
. Pick up the rat to activate or deactivate it.
Playing Pool...
To play pool you need to click and drag with the left mouse button held down
on one of the pool balls. Keep the mouse button held down, and the camera will
'rotate' around the pool ball, allowing you to aim the shot. Again, keeping the
mouse button help down, you can then use the space bar to hit the ball...
the longer you hold down the space bar, the harder the ball will be hit.
When you pot a ball you will be able to see it racking up inside the table,
through the transparent window on the side. If you pot the white ball, it will
be placed in the ball return slot the end of the table. Clicking on the coin
slot will reset the balls.
Using CTRL + A ...
If you press CTRL + A whilst dragging an object, you will pin the dragged object
so it floats in space, dangling from that position. It will remain there until
you drag it away again. This allows objects to be used for target practise, or
for the character to kick and punch. With the dummy you can do this to several
of its parts at once...for example, if you pin up both of its feet, then it will
hang upside down. To release the object again, drag the pinned part (or parts)
with the mouse.
Bear in mind that this demo was made 25 years ago at the time of writing this.
The demo's originally played videos via the projector in the room, but video player code was hardwired for a video codec that no longer seems to work. I've tried recoding the videos to other formats but that seems to cause futher issues, so I've just left them alone for the versions here.
MathEngine was one of the first available physics systems and the algorithms it used were not as robust or efficient as todays engines. As such you will see considerable instability when stacking objects, although ulimately I personaly think that kind of adds to the 'fun' of playing with objects in the demo.