SnowballGL updated to 1.1.0, brings Chipmunk Physics 5.3.4 to Android NDK

The video above demonstrates the capabilities of a 2D rigid body physics library called Chipmunk Physics. It was written in C by Scott Lembcke of Howling Wolf Software. The code was designed for 2D gaming in iOS and has become quite popular.

esuah.net created the SnowballGL package (source code, Android Market) that ported Chipmuk to Android in version 1.0. The latest update, version 1.1.0, brings the following updates:

Updated to Chipmunk 5.3.4
Updated to NDK r5
Added basic touch ui
Added basic texture support
Added dynamic viewport size to demos
Fixed segfault in touchscreen events
Removed key events
Removed trackball events

And here is a demonstration of version 1.1.0 in an Android emulator:

Ok, so the SnowballGL 1.1.0 demo video may not get your blood pumping like Howling Wolf’s Chipmunk Physics video did, but it’s great to see this gaming engine running in the Android NDK, nonetheless. SnowballGL is free in the Android Market for devices with Android 1.6 and up.

Via esuah

Tags: , , , , , ,

Post comment as twitter logo facebook logo
Sort: Newest | Oldest

Thank you for your great review! On an actual real device (Desire) SnowballGL runs at 60 fps. On an old 1.6 device (Sapphire/Magic/G1) up to 55fps (depends on demo). On the Android emulator up to 11 fps (no hardware OpenGL). SnowballGL is open source and shows how to bring the Android App lifecycle down to native c/c++ code with only a thin Java layer without root, hacks or special permissions. It works on old 1.6 devices similar the Native Activity on actual devices.

is the game with the balls at 9seconds a real game? i want that game.

Hey David, yeah, that's the Mac version of Crayon Ball, you'll find it on our website and the MAS. A few corrections to the article... it's Howling Moon Software and Chipmunk has worked on android devices for quite a while. But we're always glad to see other game libraries integrate chipmunk!