Elements

About

The Elements project is all about free and easy 2D physics for python -- with main attention on:

1. An easy-to-use, fast 2D physics API
   • for the (faster) box2d physics engine (work in progress)
   • and previously also for the Chipmunk 2d physics engine (with pymunk ctypes bindings)
   • See: Physic Engines/Speed Tests
2. Examples and documentation on how to use the API
3. Providing the examples as bundles, as they are already interesting and fun
4. Speed optimization (also with an eye on the XO laptop :)
5. Development of ideas for education and playful-learning

Browse Source | Assembla Space | Elements.xo (old, 195 kb) | box2d xo demo | Documentation

IRC: #elements on irc.freenode.net

More Informations

• IRC: #elements on irc.freenode.net
• Source-Code is GPL licensed - so do with it what you want! Even eat it :)
• A lively and open development and support team is having fun improving and helping out :)
• The Box2D compatible version of Elements will come these days. In the meantime the Chipmunk engine is almost fully supported by the previous version of Elements.

Team

• Chris Hager
• Joshua Minor
• Jaume Nualart
• iXo (Iain Davidson)

The team is open for anyone to join :)

Screenshots

(from Elements/Screenshots)

Pygame Example

The typical usage in pygame can look like this:

      import pygame
      from pygame.locals import *
      from pygame.color import *   

      from elements import *
       
      pygame.init()
      screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 800))
      clock = pygame.time.Clock()

      world = elements()
      world.add_wall((100, 200), (300, 200))
         
      # Main Game Loop:
      while running:
         # Event Handling
         # Maybe calling world.add_ball(event.pos) or world.add_square(event.pos)
         # ...

         screen.fill((255,255,255))

         # Update & Draw World
         world.update()
         world.draw(screen)

         # Flip Display
         pygame.display.flip()
          
         # Try to stay at 50 FPS
         clock.tick(50)