How to create body without it being part of the world

Question

Developing a game where balls are added from the top in timely fashion. Is there a way to create a body and put it in a queue to be added later?

This is also needed for pooling purposes. When a body is removed from the game it is put in a pool and when a similar body is needed It is taken from the pool.

Answer 1

You can't create a body outside of a b2World, as it is clearly stated in the Box2D documentation:

You should never use new or malloc to create a body. The world won't know about the body and the body won't be properly initialized.

That means you can only create a body with the method b2World::CreateBody(), which automatically adds the created body to the world.

However, you could create a pool of b2BodyDef instead of b2Body, as they are completely independent from bodies:

Box2D copies the data out of the body definition; it does not keep a pointer to the body definition.

And you can link the body with the corresponding body definition by using the userData pointer.