I've been using my own internal physics so far for my jungle game, but had been meaning to try out Box2D as I had heard good things. Whether to use third party middleware for physics comes down to a few pros and cons for me:

Middleware

• Mostly written already
• Tested
• Written by specialists
• May require customization to work well for game
• May have assumptions that don't work with game

Internal

• Deceptively quick to get *something* working, but a lot of special cases to deal with
• Programming / testing / research time consuming
• Can be easily tailored to the game

In comparison to quite a bit of middleware I've tried, I found Box2D very easy to compile, and then to slot into the game. I was able to have it effectively swapped in and out with a simple #define.

Implementation

It only took me yesterday to get much of the functionality working, which must be a record for me with middleware. First I added trees and buildings as static fixtures when the map was loaded, circles for trees and boxes for building sections. Then as dynamic actors are added (animals / floating boxes etc) they are added as circles and boxes.

Each tick (I use fixed tick rate) I can apply an impulse to the Box2D actors, then read back their positions after stepping the physics. Only the on screen actors are simulated each tick. This was easy to slot in, as my physics basically does the same.

Actor Facing

What does slightly complicate things is when I try to rotate the actors to face the direction they are travelling. This is quite simple with a circular actor, but with long box shaped actors (especially crocodiles and elephants) they can get 'trapped' trying to rotate between obstacles, and there can be jitter as the actor tries to rotate but the physics blocks it. This is an ongoing problem I am attempting to solve, with e.g. temporal smoothing or perhaps some AI rather than relying on physics.

Response

Overall I found Box2D worked great for collision detection, but handling the response in the actors may take a bit of fiddling. When a Box2D actor encounters a tree for example, he bounces or slides around it without penetrating. However in my internal engine, I am able to apply a force to push the actor away from the tree in proportion to how close it is to the centre. Although this is not 'realistic' in terms of physics, it gives a better feel to movement, and helps prevent actors getting stuck between obstacles.

On the other hand Box2D looks great for the boats, and they have collision points / responses calculated far better than my own.

Of course the other snag is that Box2D is 2D, and my game is 3D, having flying objects roofs etc. I am confident I can add in a third dimension, but at this point I am deciding whether it will be worth it, and whether it will be better to stay with the internal physics (except maybe for boats?), and spend the time instead refining the internal physics.

Performance

I did also incidentally do some crude performance timings, from memory Box2D was taking around 50-500 microseconds for a tick, versus about 10-30 microseconds for internal. This difference was to be expected as the internal is simpler. This was on my PC, the target is low power mobile phone so this will obviously be longer, I haven't timed on mobile, but I'd estimate 5-10x the time, so could possibly cause a dropped frame, although I don't foresee it being as major a bottleneck as rendering.