What is the best way to handle collision detection between bodies efficiently?

I am new to Cocos2d, Box2开发者_开发技巧d and game development all together, but I have read a good bit of tutorials to at least have a good start on a game set up and working...

Im now at the point where I need to start adding more bodies to a layer and need to check and see if and when my main avatar will collide with any of them..

Common sense seems to tell me that the more bodies I add and the more cases I add checking to see if fixture1 is colliding with fixture2 for instance will bog down the processor at some point..

Are there any best practices and/or efficient algorithms to make these checks more efficient over time as the number of bodies grow?

Any links or direction would be appreciated! thank you!

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You can use QuadTree to divide the scene and get a list of bodies that needs to be checked. (There are a lot of articles shows how QuadTree works, just google it:D )

And if that's a little complex for you. Then you can try to divide your scene into many grid, and make a loop to put bodies in their grid based on their 2d position. Then just check bodies in each grid. It's a lot faster than normal loop.

http://i.stack.imgur.com/W5cBT.png

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As of iOS 7 you can use Sprite Kit to handle collisions:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/GraphicsAnimation/Conceptual/SpriteKit_PG/Physics/Physics.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40013043-CH6-SW14