Introducing joints

Box2D provides you with a powerful set of joints to connect bodies together or simply to the world with some particular constraints.

A wise usage of this tool can make the difference in your game with realistic physics behavior such as ragdolls, vehicles, ropes, and doors.

This recipe provides an explanation for each individual joint type. After reading it, you will be able to decide between a wide range of possibilities, which is the most suitable joint to achieve a specific real-life behavior. However, the best way to understand the upcoming explanation is to make a visit to the source code and run it.

Getting ready

Before getting on with it, one should mention that creating a joint follows the same line as creating bodies. We will make use of JointDef to construct the joint itself. In addition, you could build it through initialization functions, but they are only intended for prototyping purposes as defining the geometry directly makes the joint behavior more robust.

The...