Cocos2D: Box2D body that is movable by one type of object but not another

Question

I'm in the process of creating a simple platform game using Cocos2D 2.0 and Box2D. I'm trying to create a kind of crate object that cannot be moved by the player, but that can be moved by an elephant object. When the player runs up to the crate, it should stop him dead in his tracks (as if he is running into a static Box2D body). If the elephant runs into it it should get knocked out of the way (as if the elephant was running into a dynamic Box2D body of much smaller mass/density). I can't use collision bitmask because of course I want collision to occur in both cases, I just want that collision to result in different things depending on which type of object is hitting the crate.

Anyone have a hint as to how to make this work?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Depending on the rest of your logic, you could either use collision filtering to create a case where players ignore the box, but react to an invisible unmovable box, while elephants ignore the invisible box, but react to the visible box.

Or you could use postSolvers, using the contact object passed by postSolvers in this way:

if (contact.GetFixtureA().GetBody().itemType == 'player' && contact.GetFixtureB().GetBody().itemType == 'box' ) {
contact.GetFixtureB().GetBody().setMass(999);
}

That's an oversimplified javascript example, your implementation might be different, but the concept is that you can manipulate the bodies referenced by the contact object passed to the postSolver you set.