Google developer advocate Seth Ladd has quietly but consistently been producing an excellent series of articles on his blog about a JavaScript port of Box2D, the physics engine used in Angry Birds.
Box2D is written and maintained by its original author, Erin Catto. Erin, who works for Blizzard Entertainment, built the library for a physics tutorial at GDC back in March 2006.
Erin Catto is a bit of a legend really, and I’m astonished that he only has 500 twitter followers. Surely we can help with that, right? I wonder if Jer Thorp’s plea to Rovio to chuck him some cash ever worked? I know that they at least publicly acknowledged his contribution but only after he confronted them at GDC.
Why not show your support for Erin and Box2D by donating here? I just did.
Although there are at least 2 JavaScript ports of Box2D, Seth advocates the use of Box2D-Web version as it’s an automatic conversion of the well supported and maintained ActionScript Box2DFlash.
Here are handy links to all of Seth’s articles. I’ll try to keep it updated as he goes along.
- Box2D orientation for JavaScript
- Box2D JavaScript Example Walkthrough
- Box2D FPS and World Step Tests with JavaScript
- Box2D and Web workers for JavaScript developers
- Box2D, Update Rate, and Paint Rate for JavaScript
- Box2D, Web workers, and Page Visibility API
- Box2D, Web workers, Better performance
- Box2D and Polygons for JavaScript
- Box2D with Complex and Concave Objects, for JavaSc…
- Box2D and Joints for JavaScript
- Box2D, Impulse, and JavaScript
- Box2D, Collision, Damage, for JavaScript