Create a space environment with no gravity, Box2d or not? - iphone

I want to create a cclayer with 4-5 flying objects, flying in random directions on screen. I also want those flying objects transparent to each other, which means they can fly through each other.
What I can think of Ways to do:
With Box2D
Create a box2d world with 0 gravity. and add Polygon static ground around the edges of the screen.
Give an initial force to each of the flying objects, let them flying around and reflect on the grounds.
Problems: Objects still rest down after sometime.. Don't know why. Objects collide with each other, don't know how to make them fly through each other.
Without Box2D
use CCMove for each objects, detect if they reach edge of the screen, calculate new path for their move..
Can someone point me a direction, which way is easier? Thanks a lot.

If you have to handle complex collisions - go with Box2d. If your collisions are simple - handle them yourself.

Related

Side scroller style scene with gravity

I've started learning sprite kit and I think I've got the basics but now I'm struggling with something.
I want to create a game that has a 'Streets of rage' type feel to it whereby the user can move up and down, but isn't jumping, they're still on a 2D plane. But I also want them to be effected by gravity e.g stairs etc. like the following picture.
Am I right in assuming that I should have my background image with colliders around the blue and brown edges, and then create a physicsbody collider located at the feet of my player/players so that it looks like they can move against the background, but when their feet reach the top it would stop?
Could I then place other obstacles like rocks etc on that path that they would be able to collide into, but that could also sit over the path and the sky? How would I handle the fact that these could be constantly colliding depending on the position?
I appreciate there isn't any code here, but I'm trying to understand the concept around this before I jump in coding a solution.
Thanks
I would use a categoryBitMask to separate the different planes of objects.
And I would play with collisionBitMask/contactTestBitMask depending from the plane the player is in, in addition to the z-order.
Thus you can have a rock that collides your player if they are both in the same line else the player would walk behind/front.

Breaking up a sprite in cocos2d

I'm making a 2D plane fighting game for the iPhone in cocos2d. I'm trying to make it so when you shoot an enemy plane, it breaks into a couple of separated pieces that will fall out of sight. What is generally the best practice for breaking one sprite up into many? should I create new images for each separate piece, or treat the initial image like a sprite sheet, and make a new sprite from segments?
Please look at this tutorial
It makes a grid of points then moves the internal (not-edge) ones around randomly a bit so it's not all perfect triangles. Then each update it moves/rotates the triangles separately--then draws them all at once.
You treat the whole thing as a sprite, so can run any of the usual actions on it. This example uses CCMoveBy to move the whole group down off the bottom.

How to handle a game world that wraps, using cocos2d on the iPhone

I have a game world that's much bigger than the view port, the main character stays in the center of the view port at all times and the background layer is moved around to give the impression of the character moving. I want to make it so that the game world wraps, meaning if the the character keeps traveling either left or right they will eventually end up back at the starting position. There will be moving entities in the game world so the biggest problem I foresee is that if you go to the far right of the map you should be able to see any of the moving entities that are within the first small section of the far left of the map.
I've thought a bit about this and any solution I've come up with seems far too complicated. Like creating two identical game worlds side by side and moving them around accordingly. I live in hope that there is an elegant solution to this. Any expertise you can share would be greatly appreciated.
I'm using cocos2d on the iPhone just in case that makes any difference.
An example might be to have an x,y offset for your camera, and a multidimensional array of sprite objects.
As the player moves, the offset value changes, e.g., xMove = -1.4 and yMove = +2.6.
Then you would iterate and change the positions of all the tiles by that amount.
Next, you would identify the sprites that are too far away from the center of the screen (0,0) and re-position them to the opposite side, so they will always be visible.
This would all be done on the same scheduled 'tick' so no graphical artifacts occur.
I'm pretty surprised no one has made a wrappable tile map yet for cocos2d.
I can't give cocos2d specific advice, but I would say the most common way to do this is to create one game world, draw (parts of it) multiple times and make sure that your logic for things like collisions and AI checks for wrap-around where appropriate.
So if your player character is close to the corner of the world, you'd draw the world four times with different offsets. This needn't actually draw every single thing in the world four times any more than you would normally need to draw the entire world when only a small part of it is on-screen.

Cocos2d - Creating collidable Sprites?

Hello everyone I an very new to cocos2d, so I apologize if this is a simple question. I would like to create to sprites that collide when they hit each other.
For instance, one sprite, spriteA, is in a fixed position on the screen. And another sprite, spriteB, is moving around the screen. SpriteB will collide with spriteA. If that doesn't make sense or you don't understand it, tell me and I will elaborate further. Any help is appreciated. Thank YOU!
Try using Chipmunk or Box2d physics systems. These are included with Cocos2d and work by having a physics simulation that updates with every time the graphics change on screen.
The physics simulation will tell you if two objects are overlapping, and will provide physical attributes like weight, slipperiness (friction), speed and direction, which creates reactions like bouncing, sliding, realistic loss of speed and changes of direction on impact.
If you are new to physics simulation, here's a 30 second run down:
Create "bodies" in the physics simulation that represent each graphical sprite
Bodies are usually defined more simply than their graphical counterparts, like a circle, square or simple polygon shape
In order to update the graphics on the screen accurately, first you establish a pixels to meters ratio. Meters are notional (i.e. made up) measurement that is used in the physics sim
Each time the physics simulation "ticks", you update the graphics on screen accordingly
So if a body in the physics sim moves 1 meter, you might transform the pixel sprite 32 pixels
Here's a good tute on collision detection using Box2d.
http://www.raywenderlich.com/606/how-to-use-box2d-for-just-collision-detection-with-cocos2d-iphone
enjoy
Its actually very simple:
Just schedule a timer: [self schedule:#selector(checkForCollision:)];
Specify the method: - (void)checkForCollision:(ccTime)dt {}
In the curly braces, make CGRects for each sprite using CGRectMake.
Then in the same method, just call: if (CGRectIntersectsRect) {}
That easy!
Well technically speaking when the 2 sprites interact, or share at least one common point, then they are colliding. I'm a little confused by your question. Are you asking for direction on how to make the sprite move on screen, or are you asking how to handle the actual collision(such as calling a method if they collide)?

dealing with lots of collision

What would be the best way to go about adding collision to my application. Right now I have a lot of jagged walls and a couple of weird shapes that I wanna make collision for but am not sure which is the right path to get the job done. What would you guys do if you had a room full of walls with different shapes and sizes that needed collision implemented ?
I would read a set of articles on collision detection. Paul Nettle used to write about the topic (PDF) and has a nice library for free.
This document will describe a
collision technique that allows you to
move an ellipsoid (a sphere with three
different radii, one for each axis)
through a world that not only properly
detects collisions, but also reacts in
a way that gamers would expect from
the common first person shooter.
This technique also allows for sliding
along surfaces as well as easy
implementation of gravity, which
includes sliding downhill when
standing stationary. This technique
also allows automatic climbing of
stairs and sliding over bumps in walls
(like door frames) and any other
randomly oriented “stair-like
topography”.
You can use Chipmunk physics engine, which has a very good physics + collisions.
Or even Cocos2d-iphone library - 2d game engine with Chipmunk inside. Here are examples of games, created with it.