Emanuele has come out with a new book, which is a great overview of using Box2D with real-world examples.
He had announced it back in the end of November on his blog ( http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2012/11/28/box2d-for-flash-games-book-is-on-the-shelves/ ), and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.
(Example of one of the “Totem” like game you create, with my “Crysis-like” graphics.)
(Click on certain bodies to destroy them)
Box2d is the most well known 2d physics engines, used by many mobile, flash, and indie games. This book starts with taking you through the very basics of setting up a Box2d world, to creating “Angry Birds”, and “Totem” like levels with gameplay. On top of that, it guides you through the different available abilities of Box2D, and demonstrates how to use them as you would when creating your own games.
You’ll learn different mechanisms you have for handling problems and when and how they should be used, so you can imagine applying them to your own game concepts.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has been interested in Box2D, or using physics in their games, as well as people who have used Box2d before, but haven’t discovered much more than the basics of creating bodies. You should be comfortable working with Box2D by the end of the book, and you’ll learn how to skin Box2D with your own graphics.
The book covers pretty much everything you would need to learn about Box2D to make any kind of game involving 2d physics, and even better, shows you how to use them in real world examples.
You can pick up the book here:
http://www.packtpub.com/box2d-for-flash-games/book
Included Project Files for FlashDevelop
I decided to test all the examples in FlashDevelop, and I will show off each demo with a description, and have ALL the FlashDevelop project files attached after each demo in this review.
Most of the examples I simply copied into the basic FlashDevelop AS3 project, with only the custom graphics chapter requiring me to use a different method for rendering the Bitmaps.
Also Useful For Other Programming Languages/Platforms
I will also be creating the examples for Android using LibGDX in Java, to also demonstrate that the book can be useful to you, regardless of whether you work primarily in Flash/As3, Java, or C++.
Chapter 1 just takes us through the basics of box2d, how to setup the world, and what is required to begin simulating it.
In Example 2.1, we build on chapter one by adding objects to our world, making them dynamic, and changing the material properties, to allow the objects to interact differently.
Download the source Code and please leave me any comments or feedback you have.
After that, in Example 2.2 we also create a “Totem” game level, and create the totem object using compound objects to make a complex object from simple shapes.
We also create the head of the totem as a generic polygon, by specifying individual vertices to create the shape.
Download the source Code and please leave me any comments or feedback you have.