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

Watch this and this video to see where we are heading :) Our idea is especially to bring this tool to the XO laptop, together with a teaching and learning tool which can be used to share (mesh) different scenes and exercises

IRC: #elements on irc.freenode.net

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

svn co http://svn2.assembla.com/svn/elements

More Information

• Source-Code is GPLv3 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 is being worked on, you can find the latest status in the git repository. We are still implementing Box2D's features and writing the documentation. In the meantime the Chipmunk engine is almost fully supported by the previous version of Elements.

To Do

• Joints
• Concave Polygons
• For the list of open tasks, please have a look at our tickets page: http://www.assembla.com/spaces/elements/tickets

Feature Request

What features would you like to have implemented? :)

• add here

Team

• Chris Hager (Coordination, API)
• Joshua Minor (API, Examples)
• Jaume Nualart (Support, testing)
• iXo (Iain Davidson) (Support)
• Ken (SWIG interface, API)
• Victor Blomqvist (Author of pymunk)

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)