2D Physics Engine

extralongpants · 2007-08-21T15:03:56

I'm looking for a free (preferably open-source) C/C++ library for simulation of rigid body physics in 2D. I've done a lot of google-ing, and it seems that there aren't any mature, reliable, maintained C/C++ 2d physics libraries (though I'd love to be proven wrong). I came across this thread, but a lot of the recommendations in it are now non-existent or don't meet all of my needs. The two choices that stand out are ODE, with object positions constrained to a single plane, or the Chipmunk Game Dynamics library. My main concern regarding ODE is, naturally, the fact that it was designed for 3D physics simulation. My game is going to have lots of physically enabled objects, and I'm concerned that the extra, useless dimension is going to result in lots of overhead, in both memory and computation. Another concern I have for ODE is 2D polygons - how should I represent them, if at all? Constructing 3D polygonal volumes for this purpose seems like it would very wasteful, not to mention overly difficult. Chipmunk seems to be a pretty nice library, but I have some concerns: It's not quite finished, and I don't know if it's still maintained The documentation available is not nearly as complete or as easy to follow as it is in other libraries (notably ODE). I'm not sure if it will assist me in managing objects that shouldn't always act like rigid bodies (such as the player), for which I should just need basic intersection prevention. ODE seems to be well equipped for this (with its separation of collision detection and collision response), but it's not clear to me from Chipmunk's documentation whether or not this is well handled. Right now I'm leaning toward ODE. Do any of you know of any good 2d physics libraries? Do you have any recommendations given the choices available? I really want to avoid rolling my own physics/collision detection library, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Math and Physics Programming

Started by extralongpants June 21, 2007 07:26 PM

30 comments, last by viblo 16 years, 8 months ago

skorche

136

August 21, 2007 01:08 AM

So I did get that forum set up last week.
http://www.slembcke.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=1

For any of you who have had experience with compiling Chipmunk under Windows, could you respond to this thread:
http://www.slembcke.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6

Lastly, I created a subforum for any community created games/enhancements/etc. For now, that will be the official channel to help gather any unofficial Chipmunk content.

edit: Am I blind or something? How does one create links on this forum?

[Edited by - skorche on August 22, 2007 9:08:40 PM]

viblo

127

August 21, 2007 03:03 PM

Quote:Original post by skorche
So I did get that forum set up last week.
http://www.slembcke.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=1

For any of you who have had experience with compiling Chipmunk under Windows, could you respond to this thread:
http://www.slembcke.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6

Lastly, I created a subforum for any community created games/enhancements/etc. For now, that will be the official channel to help gather any unofficial Chipmunk content.

edit: Am I blind or something? How does one create links on this forum?

I did my links with the standard html link tag a.

2D Physics Engine

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