Box2D 3.1 Character Mover, Synology higher-end NAS products require branded drives.

Box2D 3.0 has been out since August of 2024, but 3.1 just dropped with what I think is a really neat feature: a built-in character mover!

I’ve added experimental character mover support to 3.1. This uses a geometric solver. It should be useful for games that want greater control than what you get with a dynamic or kinematic body.

Here’s a video of it in action:

Nice to see Box2D getting some attention, it was pretty nice to use in an Odin gamejam project I threw together not long ago.

I’ve been a very happy Synology customer for over 15 years, but this piece of news (which echoes the Western Digital fracas from a couple of years ago) makes me wonder if I will keep recommending them.

Rui’s post is referencing this Ars Technica article, “Synology confirms that higher-end NAS products will require its branded drives”.

This sucks, I’m in the same boat, my 4-bay decently specced Synology NAS was not a cheap purchase, but I haven’t had to do any considerable messing around with that thing, it has so many features and just works, which is just what you want out of what holds all your important data.

But, I can’t support / recommend a company who’s going down this frustrating path of requiring their own drives for their own devices.