cocos2d for iPhone

A fast, easy to use, free, and community supported 2D game engine

1. 

   ildu
   Member

   Hi everyone! I'm quite new to the forum, so I thought I'd start out with a doozie.

   Now that iPad 3 is coming along (rumored around) March/April with its (rumored) double-resolution screen and the iPhone 5 with its (rumored) 4" screen, how do you see the future of accessibility and universality in Cocos and iOS apps in general?

   While the new iPhone's increase in screen size will most likely keep the pixel resolution the same, meaning the ppi would only change, I see the introduction of 2K resolution for the iPad quite alarming. Currently the best practice seems to favor universal apps, but will it be wise to have universal apps, where an iPhone user is required to download very high resolution graphics without ever using them. Could it be that Apple will somehow provide a universal approach where the instance of the app is the same, but the resources are downloaded from separate sources based on the platform it is being downloaded to?

   Any thoughts on this? How will it be handled? Are we gonna be expected to produce 3-4 separate sets of graphics for our apps?

   Posted 5 months ago #
2. 

   Dragyn
   Member

   There's always a lot of rumors, and most of them are false. The best approach would be to wait and see what happens. There was a lot of buzz before the iPad 2 that it would have a double-res screen. Nope. iPhone 5 in 2011? Nope. You can play what-if from Apple all day, but until we see actual hardware specs, it's mostly worthless to try to strategize.

   My recommendation, if you're concerned about future resolutions, would be to make all your art assets HUGE in your source material. That way, if we do get a retina iPad, you don't have to worry about upscaling grahpics to support the larger res.

   For app size, some apps are already separating retina graphics from the core download. Check out Fragger. It downloads SD graphics with the .ipa, and then you have a button on the home screen to download the HD graphics from within the app. Once the new graphics are downloaded, it resets itself to use retina graphics. Granted, then you eat your own server bandwidth serving the extra graphics. But if you can keep the core app below 20 MB, then it might be worth it.

   Posted 5 months ago #
3. 

   varedis
   Moderator

   There is no point trying to second guess what is coming out, I remember the rumors of the iPad 2 having double resolution and people rushing to prepare assets for that.

   Posted 5 months ago #
4. 

   clarus
   Member

   To make matters worse, the iPad 3 will be circular, and the next iPhone will be triangular. I have it on good authority.

   Posted 5 months ago #
5. 

   Wayne
   Member

   @clarus , yes, I also heard that iPad3 and iPhone5 will use the new cocos1D graphics engine that was announced on this forum last April 4th :)

   @ildu , Dragyn and Varedis have some good advice. No sense worrying about it. All we can hope for is that when they think of new displays, that they consider how developers need to create art assets.

   Posted 5 months ago #
6. 

   ildu
   Member

   I do agree that it's nothing to worry about yet, as we really don't know what Apple is going to do. And whichever way they may go, it's going to be a fairly level playing field for any developer to adjust. It's enough of a hurdle for them to accomodate us developers, being in their best interest, so I only hope they target resources to it.

   @dragyn Yup, I was planning on creating my resources in a larger format anyway. Whenever I paint digitally, I start out 2 or 4 times the size of my target canvas, so it looks like I'll be going for 4096x3072 this time :). So it's not really a problem production-wise. I hadn't heard of Fragger's approach, thanks. It sounds like something Apple should take a look at. For me, having the extra downloadables on my own servers wouldn't be an option, since I don't have the resources nor the time to manage them.

   Being new to the forum, I'm only asking to get a sense of how people here tend to prepare (or not) to upcoming (or not) developments. The app that I'm developing is quite heavy in art assets so I can't help but be a little apprehensive about retina on the iPad. Nevertheless, it's not something I would waste code on at this moment.

   Posted 5 months ago #
7. 

   ika33
   Member

   I heard the iPad3 will release on the Jobs birthday.

   Posted 3 months ago #

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