[ast3r3x]

I have a project I want to work on that requires hundreds (hopefully thousands) of shapes drawn to the screen, all moving and knowing when they collide. However I am very new to Cocoa and not really sure about the best way to go about this. In fact I am not sure HOW to go about this since I've never done Quartz/CImage/CAnimation anything before and was hoping people could give me a push in the right direction.

Before I even embark on this first…is this something that I'm going to be able to do? I mean can a normal computer handle thousands of 2d shapes being drawn and all moving around with some sort of collision detection?

If it can, where do I even start?

Edit: All this stuff is going to be 2D.

[Enki]

That kind of code can use a few Cocoa API's but it will mostly be straight C or C++. There are people who do that kind of thing as career projects or degree research into how to make it work well and quickly.

If you are not already a crack coder with a desire to spend a couple years on getting it right, go straight to http://www.box2d.org/ and use it as the engine. Do the windowing environment in Cocoa. Marriage made in heaven.

[RobUSVI]

A few places to help you find information:

http://www.cocoadev.com/
http://developer.apple.com/

As pointed out above, a game/physics engine might be the easiest way to go.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Enki If you are not already a crack coder with a desire to spend a couple years on getting it right, go straight to http://www.box2d.org/ and use it as the engine.

I've not used either, but another more robust option to consider may be Open Dynamics Engine, the physics/collision engine that 2D Boy chose to use for World of Goo.

[Enki]

ODE is old, creaky and uses a set of algorithms that require hacks to keep things stable. Bullet is a FAR better open source 3D physics engine. Box2D is done with many of the same techniques as Bullet, but in the 2D versions.

[ast3r3x]

Thanks guys, this is definitely going to be a lot more work than I originally planned, but it'll probably be a great learning experience.

I decided to go with box2d because I'm not sure I could wrap my head around 3d stuff right now although I think that would be something cool to add in the future. I have box2d working, although right now I need to figure out the best way to animate things in cocoa.

[Enki]

Don't try to "animate it in Cocoa". Animate it in you code using Box2D and just display the result in a Cocoa-based display. http://developer.apple.com/samplecod...aGL/index.html