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ioscocos2d-iphonebox2dchipmunk

For collision detection only, is Chipmunk or Box2d the better tool?

For a Cocos2d based project, I'd like to use a physics toolkit for collision detection only. What are the pros/cons of using Chipmunk or Box2d?

Solution

  • What kind of collisions are we talking about?

    If all you need are these:

    • rect intersects rect -> CGRectIntersectsRect(..)
    • point in rect -> CGRectContainsPoint(..)
    • radius intersect (ie distance of two points) -> ccpDistance(..)

    Then you don't need a physics engine at all, and you don't have to write your own collision detection algorithms either.

    Chipmunk and Box2D handle collisions equally well. I'm of the opinion that if one is asking "which is better" it's not going to matter for you. Instead, ask yourself whether you're more comfortable working with C (Chipmunk) or C++ (Box2D).

    Similarly, do you prefer working with an object-oriented, verbose API (Box2D) or a functional, highly abbreviated API (Chipmunk)?

    Base your decision on what makes it easier for you to work with rather than some arbitrary, undefined, and highly subjective idea of whether one physics engine might be better than the other, because the technical differences are marginal and you can only assess their influence on your game's design if you both know your own game design and the physics engines internal algorithms really well.