I have developed a few business apps with the normal UIView-based SDK and want to try to develope some small games for fun.
What are my choices for developing games for iPhone/iPad? I've read about Cocos2d, but what other options is there? Is Cocos2d good enough for doing all kinds of 2d games or is there some limits using it?
I have developed a few business apps with the normal UIView-based SDK and want to try to develope some small games for fun.
What are my choices for developing games for iPhone/iPad? I've read about Cocos2d, but what other options is there? Is Cocos2d good enough for doing all kinds of 2d games or is there some limits using it?
I'm not the developer on my team, but we use Unity 3D to develop games - it's a great multi-platform game development software/engine. You can code in Unity in C# and then export it to XBOX, PC, Android, and of course, iOS.
There are a lot of options, but also a lot of technologies designed for corporate apps being sold as suitable for games when they are not.
Cocos2D is too tied to Objective C and iOS for my liking, although it was a good start.
Unity is fine if you need 3D and it has great tools, but it's also expensive, closed source and produces large binaries which can be a problem if you are targeting casual games. Personally I feel 3D is overkill for most mobile games unless you are a big budget game like Infinity Blade (which uses Unreal engine).
Moai is a new open source Lua framework that has turned out some pretty cool games lately (Bungie Crimson game) and looks like the logical replacement for Cocos2D as it covers iOS, Android plus desktop and browsers with one code base. Moai | The mobile platform for pro game developers
I have developed a few business apps with the normal UIView-based SDK and want to try to develope some small games for fun.
What are my choices for developing games for iPhone/iPad? I've read about Cocos2d, but what other options is there? Is Cocos2d good enough for doing all kinds of 2d games or is there some limits using it?
Cocos2D is a very well developed platform which is still being moved forward. As it's based on OGL and full source is available you are not really restricted. Cocos3D sits on top of Cocos2D and gives a 3D world and the ability to use all the 2D stuff.
I have written 2 regular apps and am now doing my first iphone game using Cocos3D & finding it reasonably easy. It's the way to go if you don't have lots of money to invest & want to concentrate on iphone. There's also the Sparrow Framework which is 2D but 3D support seems to be coming.
ps: Cocos2D forum over 100,000 posts, Moai forum 200 posts, Sparrow about 10,000 posts so Cocos2D has by far the largest following.
Last edited by SundialSoft; 12-04-2011 at 09:17 AM.
Cocos2D is a very well developed platform which is still being moved forward. As it's based on OGL and full source is available you are not really restricted. Cocos3D sits on top of Cocos2D and gives a 3D world and the ability to use all the 2D stuff.
I have written 2 regular apps and am now doing my first iphone game using Cocos3D & finding it reasonably easy. It's the way to go if you don't have lots of money to invest & want to concentrate on iphone. There's also the Sparrow Framework which is 2D but 3D support seems to be coming.
ps: Cocos2D forum over 100,000 posts, Moai forum 200 posts, Sparrow about 10,000 posts so Cocos2D has by far the largest following.
That's an important point! Support is everything. The last thing you want to happen is to spend all the time/money to get a good game going, then not have the support you need to keep it going or make changes.
If you search around, you'll find all kinds of tools, everyone's trying to sell something, use care in choosing the tools you invest your time/product in.
That's an important point! Support is everything. The last thing you want to happen is to spend all the time/money to get a good game going, then not have the support you need to keep it going or make changes.
If you search around, you'll find all kinds of tools, everyone's trying to sell something, use care in choosing the tools you invest your time/product in.
Cocos2d is fine for games, but I do think a lot of people seem not to realize that they can develop most games just fine in objective C and Cocoa alone. I think perhaps the biggest advantage of Cocos2d for game development is the easy integration of the big two physics engines - if you don't need those, I'd try objective c before resorting to Cocos2d.
Developing games: What are my choices?
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