I tend to avoid trying new things until the last minute. I usually have to be dragged kicking and pouting into new technology or a new way of thinking. However, if I need to learn something new for a client, though I will still kick and pout, I find the threat of a shitty deadline is just the thing to allow me to dive into something new.
JBox2D is the new thing that is occupying my time these days. Co-worker Andrew explained to me that there is no need to try to build a physics engine when there are so many decent ones out there already. Find some sturdy shoulders to stand on and enjoy the view.
I will admit, the view is quite nice. Getting someone else to do the heavy lifting required by collision detection and handling is quite a freeing feeling. And its so fast too! And little-to-no jitter!
Attraction from flight404 on Vimeo.
Best to see the HD version on Vimeo. There are seven videos from this exploration posted so far. Sadly, Vimeo is being a bitch lately. Now it refuses to show that I have uploaded seven new videos. But if you do a search for ‘jbox2d’, it should show you the seven that I have posted.
Looks cool! I had a go with physics in Processing but the library I ended up finding was Phys2D. I’ll have to look at JBox2D to see which is best.
Yeah Box2d is wonderful. It’s hard to justify using an open-source framework/library/project for something that needs to go into production. But I spend my spare time playing with things like Box2d, so that I feel more comfortable when such a project comes up.
I haven’t used JBox2d, only Box2DFlashAS3 (http://box2dflash.sourceforge.net/) , and it’s just awesome. It took a little bit of hacking to modify the ‘Ground’ object so that it didn’t have to be flat, but luckily the code was easy to read and extend.
heh Found my Box2DFlashAS3 experiment, check this out…
wasd – control the character
click – fire a bullet from the character
ctrl + click – creates a planet with 2d gravity
shit + click – creates a box
alt + click – creates an invisible black hole
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/8757/Gorebit/index.html
If the character goes off screen, he might get stuck there. Kinda annoying…
You can send things (including the character) into orbit around planets and black holes. That’s fun
Very nice explorations! Please keep sharing!
Any chance you can help describe how you got this set up for Processing?
+ m
Just trying to contact you and can’t find an e-mail link. Is the new iTunes visualizer your work?
This test looks great and and it’s exactly the kind of behavior I’m looking for. I’m new to processing, any help or leads for how to set this engine up with processing would be greatly appreciated.
to get this installed for processing you can use boxwrap2d which uses a small skin wrap to get jbox2d functional in processing
http://processing.org/discourse/yabb_beta/YaBB.cgi?board=os_libraries_tools;action=display;num=1213404906