Get your iOS cocos2d game ported to Android

Published by jordo on January 26, 2012 in cocos2d. 4 Comments

Rewriting source code is not fun.  We ended up doing a lot of that when we ported our first game, Super Stickman Golf to android.  It turned out great, and you can see the results on the android market here, but we definitely did not want to do another rewrite ever again.

So we started working on technology to bring cocos2d games to the android platform.  We recently used this technology to port our latest game ‘Lunar Racer’. I’ve just uploaded a video of a beta build running on the android platform here:

Aside from making some improvements in cocos2d, we’ve developed some useful libraries for the android platform over the last year. We’ve built native libraries that wrap in-app transaction support, UIAlertView pop-ups (the android version), hardware button support (the android ‘back’ button), multi-resolution support (alignment, scaling, and different graphic sets), ads, as well as others. All of these things were pretty much necessary to make the android experience of our games equal to their iOS counterparts.

We’re now looking for more quality cocos2d iphone titles to port and publish on the android platform. We already have a few great iOS games lined up and are looking for more to battle test our libraries. We also have a few big name partners lined up for new game launches as well as promotional agreements and press in place. We’re also open to a variety of arrangements.

The android platform is tricky. Lots of gotchas with everything from development, to distribution, to marketing. If you’d like to get your games ported to android without any hassle, and would like to benefit from our development, marketing, and promotional expertise fire us an email at: jordan [AT] noodlecake.com.

Also, to follow the development of the core technology see this forum thread.

 

About the author: Jordan Schidlowsky is the founder of Noodlecake Studios and Noodlecake Games.  Noodlecake Games is a Saskatoon based company which is helping iOS developers port and publish their games on Android.

{lang: 'ar'}

Numberlys: new iPhone App of the Week

Published by riq on January 20, 2012 in cocos2d and games. 1 Comment

Numberlys, a cocos2d based interactive book, is the new iPhone App of the Week. Congratulations Moonbot Studios.

Download:

More cocos2d apps posts: cocos2d games

{lang: 'ar'}

Scramble With Friends: new Top #1 game

Published by riq on January 20, 2012 in cocos2d and games. 0 Comments

Scramble With Friends and Scramble With Friends Free, two cocos2d based games, are the new Top Paid #1, Top Free #1 and Top Grossing #3. Congratulations Zynga.

Download:
  • Scramble With Friends: $0.99
  • Scramble With Friends Free: $Free

More cocos2d games posts: cocos2d games

Disclaimer: Although I work for Zynga, this site is not affiliated with them.

{lang: 'ar'}

cocos2d v2.0-beta2 released

Published by riq on January 20, 2012 in cocos2d. 6 Comments

Hi, I am happy to announce that cocos2d v2.0-beta2 is available for download:

Highlights since v2.0-beta1:

  • New transitions
  • Improved templates
  • Easier integration with UIKit

Full Changelog: CHANGELOG

Release Notes: Release Notes v2.0-beta2

API Reference: API Reference v2.0-beta2

Migration Guide: Migrating from v1.x to v2.0

{lang: 'ar'}

Cocos2d for iPhone 1 Game Development Cookbook

Published by n8burba on January 6, 2012 in cocos2d. 21 Comments

After a year of writing and development I am proud to say that Cocos2d for iPhone 1 Game Development Cookbook is now in print!

Cocos2d for iPhone 1 Game Development Cookbook

This book is designed to be the ultimate 2D game development book. It includes the full code of over 100 recipes built using XCode 4 and iOS 5. Every major area of game development is covered.

Recipes are designed to be modular. Get the book, download the code and plug them into your project.

Here are some of the stand-out recipes:

Go to the book website and you can download the first chapter (17 recipes) for free (PDF + XCode project).

You can also explore the entire book, watch videos explaining each chapter and download free apps to test the recipe demos on your device.

Here is the video for Chapter 7: AI and Logic:

You can purchase the book on Amazon or from Packt Publishing:

If you have any questions you can send me an email at cocos2dcookbook@gmail.com.

I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to cocos2d-iphone. Without such a great framework and community to support it I wouldn’t have the opportunity to write this book.

{lang: 'ar'}

Updated cocos3d – a 3D extension for cocos2d

Published by Bill Hollings on December 19, 2011 in cocos2d and cocos3d. 49 Comments Tags: .
cocos3d 'hello, world' example

A screenshot from the cocos3d Application template, showing a 3D take on the traditional 'hello, world' app.

Update [2011-12-19]:

cocos3d 0.6.5 has been released.

This is an important patch release that fixes an error in the soft-body vertex skinning POD loading mechanism that was introduced in cocos3d 0.6.3. This issue affected some large and complex POD files, and caused some regular mesh nodes to be loaded as skinned nodes, which resulted in them sometimes not being rendered.

This issue affects all POD files, including those that do not contain soft-body nodes or use vertex skinning.

If you are using cocos3d 0.6.3 or cocos3d 0.6.4, it is strongly recommended that you upgrade to the 0.6.5 version.

Find out what’s new here.

cocos3d ia a significant extension to cocos2d that adds a full 3D modelling space, including 3D mesh models, perspective projection cameras, materials, and lighting. With cocos3d, you can populate your world with 3D models exported from 3D editors such as Blender, 3ds Max or Cheetah3D, combined with models you create dynamically in your Objective-C code.

Integration with cocos2d is seamless. Rendering of all 3D model objects occurs within a special cocos2d layer, which fits seamlessly into the cocos2d node hierarchy, allowing 2D nodes such as controls, labels, and health bars to be drawn under, over, or beside 3D model objects. With this design, 2D objects, 3D objects, and sound can interact with each other to create a rich, synchronized audio-visual experience.

Like cocos2d, cocos3d is written entirely in Objective-C, and many of your favourite cocos2d paradigms, such as CCActions, are available for 3D objects. And like cocos2d, it is distributed for free under an MIT license.

Continue reading ‘Updated cocos3d – a 3D extension for cocos2d’

{lang: 'ar'}

Tiny Tower: iPhone Game of the Year

Published by riq on December 12, 2011 in cocos2d and games. 7 Comments

According to Apple, Tiny Tower (a cocos2d powered game) is the new iPhone Game of the Year!
Congratulations NimbleBit

  • Download Tiny Tower: $Free
{lang: 'ar'}

1st Birthday of Cocos2d-X

Published by Walzer on November 30, 2011 in family. 19 Comments

Cocos2d-x open source project is C++ version of cocos2d-iphone. We focus on making cocos2d framework cross multiple platforms. Mobile games can be written on the top of cocos2d-x in C++ or Lua language, via the COMPLETELY SAME API as cocos2d-iphone, they can easily be built & run on iOS, Android, Samsung Bada and BlackBerry Tablet OS. Cocos2d-x also supports Windows & Linux, therefore we can debug source code easily and write editors on desktop operating systems.

Here’s our website: http://www.cocos2d-x.org

1. Native Gap  for cpp

NativeGap4cpp

C++ is not as elegant as ObjectiveC, but it is supported widely by most mobile/desktop platforms. Even if some platforms offer high level programming language, for example, WebOS, the closest to html5, they still open a gap of C++ & OpenGL ES for making performance-hungry games. So C++ & OpenGL ES is the most common gaming layer on most platforms.

Cocos2d-x caught is gap to make games cross platforms. Besides libGLES, we can also benefit from various C/C++ resources such as pthread, libxml2, libCurl, poco, etc to reduce our workload.

2. Supported Platforms

(Ordered by stability & reliability)

Platform Status Remarks
 1 iOS 4.0~5.0 Stable 63 registered games with about 3.5 million downloads
 2 Android 2.0~2.3, 3.0~3.1 Stable 62 registered games with about 16.6 million downloads
 3 Windows Stable Please don’t release games base on win32 port before we replace PowerVR GLES library with OpenGL
 4 Bada Stable Finished in v0.10.0. Some alpha users have released games onto samsung store, and have totally 90,000+ downloads
 5 BlackBerry Tablet OS Coming Soon Finished & merging. RIM guys joined in us recently
 6 Ubuntu Usable Linux port uses OpenGL directly.
 7 WoPhone Almost deprecated Without maintenance for several months
 8 Marmalade Almost deprecated Only one game released is base on this port. We’re looking for a maintainer of this port
 9 MeeGo Deprecated Finished but unmerged.  MeeGo is deprecated by Nokia & Intel after our contributors finished this port, oops

3. Some Top Games using cocos2d-x

You can find more awesome games & showcases from http://www.cocos2d-x.org/projects/cocos2d-x/apps. So far, cocos2d-x games have more than 20 million downloads on ios / android / bada totally.
1 year ago, cocos2d-x released its first version at Nov.30 2010. During the last year, more than 125 mobile games/apps were released based on cocos2d-x, in other words, 2 new games per week. Many contributors & blog writers joined in us, shared their new platform ports, bug fixes, cool features, and tutorials to community. Thanks to all of you.

We plan to make more cool stuffs in the coming year. You’ll see, aha.

{lang: 'ar'}

cocos2d v2.0-beta released

Published by riq on November 29, 2011 in cocos2d. 18 Comments

Hi, I am happy to announce that cocos2d v2.0-beta is available for download:

Highlights from v2.0-alpha:

  • Forward-ported changes from v1.1 (batched particles, faster reorder, ARC compatible, and more)
  • Improved draw internal API
  • Added alignment + multiline in LabelBMFont
  • Added “Milliseconds per frame” in Director
  • Improved internal GL cache
  • and more

Full Changelog: CHANGELOG

Release Notes: Release Notes v2.0-beta

API Reference: API Reference v2.0-beta

Migration Guide: Migrating from v1.x to v2.0

v2.0 Mini FAQ:

Q: Should I use v2.0 or v1.0 ?

  • A: It depends on your requirements, and varies from case to case.
  • A: If you need to support older devices (1st & 2nd generation iPhones) you should use cocos2d v1.x
  • A: If you need to GL shaders, you should use cocos2d v2.x
  • A: v2.0 is about supporting new technologies (blocks, OpenGL ES 2.0, etc) and improving the current API, while cocos2d v1.x is about backward compatibility

Q: How stable is v2.0-beta ?

  • A: From a code point of view, it is pretty stable. At Zynga, we have just released a game that is based on cocos2d v2.0 (DreamZoo)
  • A: But from an API point of view, you should know that the API is still not stable. It might change a bit until v2.0-final is released.

Q: When v2.0-final will be released ?

  • A:Most probably during Q1 2012, perhaps in February.
{lang: 'ar'}

Amazing Breaker and Ski On Neon: Top Paid #1 and Top Free #1 Apps

Published by riq on November 26, 2011 in cocos2d and games. 5 Comments

Amazing Breaker, a cocos2d game,  is the new Top Paid App #1. Congratulations Dekovir, Inc.!

Also, Flick Home Run! is Top Paid App #8.

In the Free chart there are 7 cocos2d apps in the Top 12, including Top Free #1 Ski On Neon.

{lang: 'ar'}