Editors #2

To read Editors #1, please go here: Editors

cocos2d for iPhone supports different formats for the sprites, tiles and fonts. The following is a list of the editors supported by cocos2d:

Tiles

The popular tile editor called Tiled can be used to generate tile maps for cocos2d. With it, you can create orthogonal, isometric and hexagonal maps.

Tiled has 2 versions:

• Native (QT) version: This version is constantly being updated. It is much easier to use, and has a nicer GUI. The only missing feature, as of today, is support for hexagonal maps.
• Java version: It’s the old version, it supports hexagonal, isometric and orthogonal maps, but with an uglier GUI.

For further information regarding how to use Tiled and cocos2d, please read: Programming guide: How to use tile maps

Download: http://mapeditor.org

Sprites

Robert Payne updated the old Texture Atlas Creator. The new version is now called  Zwoptex, and this is the new homepage: Zwoptex homepage

New features:

• Has more arranging options
• canvas size adjustment
• Minimum spacing for arranging
• A centralized way to load frames (similar to Flash)

Recently Robert also released the source code of the editor: http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/forum/topic/4300

For further information regarding how to use Zwoptex in cocos2d, please read: How to use Zwoptex and CCSpriteFrameCache

The guys from GameDoctors, also created an utility called mkatlas.pl to generate a compacted texture atlas from different image files. This utility is included in  the cocos2d distribution and can be found in the /tools directory.

Fonts

cocos2d has 3 ways to render fonts:

• CCLabel: Which renders fonts using both system and custom .TTF files (introduced in v0.1)
• CCLabelAtlas: Which renders fixed-width fonts from an image file (introduced in v0.5)
• CCBitmapFontAtlas: Which renders variable-width fonts from an image file (introduced in v0.8)

To create images for CCLabelAtlas and CCBitmapFontAtlas you can use the following editors:

CCBitmapFontAtlas:

• Hiero Bitmap Font Tool: Supports kerning, effects (gradient, shadow, etc…), padding, offset, page size and more. Download: http://slick.cokeandcode.com/demos/hiero.jnlp (Java Applet)
• BMFont: It has more or less the same features as Hiero, with the limitation that it only works on Windows . Download: http://www.angelcode.com/products/bmfont/

CCLabelAtlas:

• charmap: Is a command line utility that generates valid images for CCLabelAtlas. Download: http://silentmac.com/?tag=charmap
• GIMP Plugin created by michu: It is a plugin for GIMP v2.6 that generates valid images for CCLabelAtlas. Download: http://www.neophob.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/173-Create-a-fixed-size-font-image.html

Recently, the guys from Indeeo created a new editor for an improved LabelAtlas, called ALLabelAtlas.

This editor supports some effects like shadow, and it also adds support for kerning.

Download: http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/forum/topic/4357

Update: tilluigi told us about a Photoshop plugin to generate SpriteSheets: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=10578.0

If you know any other editor, please, let us know! Thanks.