cocos2d for iPhone

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

1. 

   FUZZI
   Member

   Hey,

   I currently began designing / programming my first game. I really don't have experience in that but I'm willing to learn by doing. Maybe you understand I don't want to make big mistakes during the first steps of development so here my question:
   Do you think I should use one of the physic engines?
   My game is a little bit comparable to doodle jump (but really just a little bit) and I think I could do the collision checking by myself. But I'm a bit afraid of running into situations where the decision to use a physic engine would have saved me a lot of trouble.
   I like the cool actions Cocos2d offers, is it correct that I can't easily combine using them with e.g. using Box2D?

   Also I'm comfortable with Objective C but I don't have that much experience in C++ (but I don't think that would be a big problem)

   So if performance isn't the big problem - would you use a physic engine or rather try succeeding without one?

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   jd
   Member

   If you are more comfortable with obj-c, then you could use chipmunk. I suggest you use a physics engine. Also apply forces to your objects instead of using the actions for your type of game.

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   FUZZI
   Member

   A thanks for pointing me back to Chipmunk, I always thought this was pure c but now I saw there is an objective c wrapper around it :-)

   But on the other hand I often read Box2D is much more powerful.... (and it seems there are much more sample projects using Box2D than using Chipmunk)

   Posted 1 year ago #
4. 

   hactar
   Member

   Personally following these forums, my experience is people do the overkill and use physics engines for things that can be done with boundBox checking and simple sin/cos/tan math. Performance on the iPhone is a real pain in situations where one is surprised that doing this would cause such a performance drop (like init/allocing a few hundred objects).

   My advice would be, if your not doing something that truly requires physics, something that you can solve yourself with simple math and a few RectIntersectsRect checks, don't use the physics engine and enjoy the free performance (and longer battery life) that you get.

   Posted 1 year ago #
5. 

   Knighty
   Member

   I'll keep that in mind hactar. Does Box2d really tax the iphone memory that much?

   Posted 1 year ago #
6. 

   Doches
   Member

   Knighty: Hactar is right; you could probably get away with rolling your own geometry and simple collision detection. That said, if you need to move beyond really simple stuff later on (by adding new types of objects or interactions) you're going to be really glad that you put forth the effort to integrate something like Chipmunk or Box2D. It may seem like a bit of overkill now but it could save you an incredible amount of effort trying to patch it in later.

   Posted 1 year ago #

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