World

Each instance of p5play has its own world object, that can be used to control the Box2D physics simulation. Its most important property is gravity, which has x and y components.

Note that the physics simulation is deterministic. That means if you run the same code twice, unless you're using random values, you'll get the same result!

Sleeping

world.allowSleeping is true by default.

A sprite starts "sleeping" when it stops moving and doesn't collide with anything new. "Sleeping" sprites get ignored during physics simulation, which usually prevents the Box2D physics engine solver from having to make unnecessary calculations. While this is good for performance, sometimes it can cause problems.

You can wake up a sleeping sprite by setting sprite.sleeping to false. You can also disable sleeping on a per sprite basis by setting sprite.allowSleeping to false.

Controlling Time

The world.timeScale ratio is set to 1 by default for real time physics simulation. Set it lower for slow motion. Make it 0 to pause time!

Note that the Box2D physics engine solver is only stable up to a time scale of 2. If you want to advance the simulation by a larger amount of time, run the world.step function multiple times.

Click the canvas in the example to make the physics simulation progress in slow motion, 1/4th real time. The Matrix bullet time effect is achieved by making the background of each frame slightly transparent.

world.realTime stores how many real time seconds have elapsed since the start of the world, including pauses.

world.physicsTime stores how many seconds have elapsed in the physics simulation.