I’ve talked about the basics of Box2DFlash v1.4.3 in my Introductory tutorial. I showed how to create your world and how to introduce simple bodies into that world. With the release of Box2DFlash v2.0.0 the basics remain mostly the same, there are a few details changed. I need to go over these small changes before I move on to the next step of adding joints and forces to the bodies.

The first and biggest change (although really a small thing) is that we no longer work in pixels! We now work in units that by default equal 30 pixels to 1 unit (think of it as meters; 30px : 1m). With this change our normal gravity is no longer (0, 300) but instead (1, 10). This makes more sense to me at least because gravity in reality is 9.81 m/s/s. This is going to effect almost everything you do, from applying forces to setting the width and height of a box.

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I wanted to try something fun with Flash this week, so I did a quick search for “Flash Physics Engine.” Lo and behold, I struck gold. Box2DFlashAS3 is an open source ActionScript 3.0 conversion of the C++ Physics Engine Box2D. I’m very impressed with its well coded structure and easily implemented nature. I learned a few new things that will change how I code forever just by reading through their example files.

Still, they have limited resources right now as far as help documentation goes (”Please refer to the source code from the examples provided to get an idea of how to use Box2DFlash in your projects.” — that’s the ReadMe.txt that comes with it… not very helpful,huh). I thought I might give you an example of my own and walk through it step by step.
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As a designer you might be really excited about the power Flash CS3 has to offer you, but a little frustrated with the complicated ActionScript required to turn your vision into reality. Or maybe, as a Flash developer you are getting hung up on the difficult transition from ActionScript 2.0 to AS 3.0. Well, it’s my job here to try and help you through that learning process.

I’m going to be trying to post a new ActionScript 3.0 tutorial once a week (and maybe some AS 2.0 tutorials if requested) every Monday. If you have any specific requests or questions you can ask them in a post comment or send me an e-mail at Paul@ClickPopMedia.com. If you are looking for more immediate answers there is a great resource for ActionScript help at ActionScript.org. You might see me answering questions in their forum (as TomMalufe) or see some of my tutorials posted there.