Box2D in Unity

Browsing through my usual Twitter #unity3d feeds I saw a post from one of our community members QuickFingers. He is working on a port of Box2D to Unity. After watching the YouTube video he posted I couldn't resist posting it here. Maybe we can all persuade him to release it on the Asset Store? I for one would think it's pretty shiny to combine the power of SM2 and Box2D.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etqMAKpwcm0&hd=1

 

Agree, would love to see this in the Asset store.

-Jeff Weber.

 

Wow this looks promising, I hope he does put it on the asset store. I could easily see people paying $50-$100+ for having Box2D available in Unity.

 

there is already a Box2d port in C# that can be made to work with unity. (or you can use external dll). Anyway, I would personally also buy it if it is available in the asset store to save time. It would be a nice thing to have.

 

I'm not actively using unity yet, but my plan was to port the Farseer Physics Engine to Unity. Farseer Physics is a .Net-ified c# wrapper for Box2D and is very actively being developed. http://farseerphysics.codeplex.com/

I was the originator of the Farseer Physics engine, but I have since passed it off to others.

If, QuickFingers, doesn't end up getting Box2D fully up and running in Unity by the time I need Box2D, then I will port Farseer.

Not sure it'd be right to sell something that is essentially just a wrapper around a free open source project. I think it should just be a free assest.

-Jeff Weber
www.farseergames.com

 

is there any benefits of using this instead of physx?

 

Well it's purely 2d and I'm familiar with the API. Those are my reasons for wanting to use it.

 

it's open source, so you can modify whatever you want. I would imagine it would be lighter, also file size should be smaller for iphone.
It would have a different feel than physx, which might be preferrable depending on the game you are making.

I don't see a moral problem for selling it, if it is well integrated in unity. I wouldn't mind paying for it if the price is reasonable.

 

You can actually restrict rigidbody's pos/rot to a given axis (or some axis instead of all 3 axis) in Unity.

 

Looks perfect for 2D games. I do agree though, selling a wrapper for an engine of any sort that is supposed to be free, just seems wrong.

 

Well, he isn't selling it or anything at the moment. Heck, he may not even release it. It was just something he posted on his Twitter account.

That said I wouldn't have a problem paying for it either if the price was reasonable. I think if someone manages to implement something I would like to use in a project I could choose to pay for it. The fact that it would basically be a wrapper for something that is open source isn't the point. You would be paying for the time it took someone to write that wrapper, so you don't have to. Don't feel like paying for it, sure, you can write the wrapper yourself. Although I also have absolutely no problem with the free stuff. I think there are quite of few excellent scripts on this forum which must have taken quite some time to write and people are giving them away for free. It's alway a nice gesture to give something back to this great community.

I think the benefits of using this could be that it's easier on the system resources. But I have no data to back this claim up, so I could be totally wrong on that one.