Sapus Tongue Source « cocos2d for iPhone

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Sapus Tongue Source

(14 posts) (7 voices)

Started 2 years ago by AggroPanda
Latest reply from AggroPanda

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AggroPanda
Member

Hi All,

Not sure if this is correct forum for this, so mods if not, please remove / move it :)

Just a quick query really regarding the Sapus Tongue Source product. I have seen on a couple of posts that complete beginners to Obj-C and cocos2d programming have found it very useful.

However, I've been programming for about 6 years now, and I can happily code in Obj-C with around 2 years of iPhone game and application programming. I'm thinking about using cocos2d for my next game, so I'm just wondering if it will still be useful for me?

Also, I've played around with the demos that come with cocos2d and I pretty much understand what is going on. However, would getting this source help me with problems that I am likely to encounter during the development process?

Thanks in advance,

AggroPanda

Posted 2 years ago #
skyhawk
Member

Getting the source is a great way to support the developer of cocos2d. It also offers you near unlimited access to asking him questions.

If however you feel you are a solid enough programmer, and don't mind spending a few hours just investigating and understanding, then it is not necessary to purchase it.

Of course I still support purchasing, even if only because you are feeding riq =D

Posted 2 years ago #
AggroPanda
Member

Thanks for your reply, I completely agree that it's worth getting even if it's just to support Riq.

I've been actively reading his blog and these forums for many months now and I will definitely buy the source to say thanks really :)

And if it helps me in anyway that it will be worth it on my part too.

Hopefully you'll be seeing a new game release from me very shortly.

Also, once I completely get my head around cocos2d I hope to become a very active member of this forum and offer help to those who are in the same position I'm in at the moment.

Thanks,

AggroPanda

Posted 2 years ago #
AggroPanda
Member

Another quick question, could you please tell me anything about how the game class structure works?

For example, do the characters (the monkey and the frog) have their own classes? Or are they just sprites that are loaded on the game scene?

It would be more helpful if they have their own classes, and if so do the inherit a cocos2d node, a CCSprite for example? For larger games I feel this would be a better class structure, than just loading the sprite on the game scene. To see how Riq handles this himself would really be useful.

I hope that makes sense?

Cheers,

AggroPanda

Posted 2 years ago #
cadillac
Member

The characters do not have their own classes and there was no need for them to be in one. I'm sure Riq could have done it but it is completely pointless as they are just chipmunk bodies with sprites on them, either the monkey or the frog. There are no unique attributes. It was unnecessary as it is just a simple game. It is very easy to implement your own unique classes just by studying the cocos2d samples.

The Sapus Tounge source code is an excellent starting point no matter your past programming experience. It covers almost everything you could ask for like, handling and preloading sounds, storing data, producing a lite version, integrating admod, playing other media such as video, and all the necessary game functions that a beginner might ask for (too many to mention). I believe purchasing this saved us 2 months in learning cocos2d let alone objective C from scratch. If you really want to invest your time and money in iPhone 2d games development then I highly recommend it.

Posted 2 years ago #
gaminghorror
Member

I bought it and i have about the same amount of programming experience. At the time i had zero Objective-C, Xcode and Mac OS experience. The code certainly helped me to get up to speed with cocos2d. Especially things that weren't immediately straightforward, like scenes and transitioning between them, actions and of course physics.

It probably won't help you solve your actual coding problems, unless you intend to do a game very similar (at least in parts) to Sapus Tongue. Given the time it saved me i think it was a good investment even though i only used it to get started.

Posted 2 years ago #
AggroPanda
Member
@cadillac - yeah, I understand that is probably wasn't nesessary for this game with it being a pretty simple example of what cocos2d is capable of, however it would still be useful to know how such a class structure would be handle in cocos2d.

The game I have planned would have around 10 different enemies, all with common 'enemy' attributes, however some would have different attributes and methods, so the class structure I had in mind was something like this... keep in mind it's a very simple example :)
```
Enemy : CCSprite - Properties (Type, Health, Speed) & Methods (Create, Destory, Update, Draw, Attack)
SmallEnemy : Enemy - Methods (Attack - Override)
BigEnemy : Enemy - Methods (Attack - Override)
```
Of course, these are only example properties and methods, but hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say. But my main issue is how do I handle adding these objects onto my scene using a spritemanager etc and updating them from within a scene?

This is even the correct way of going about things? I just what to encapsulate as much as possible, to maximise code reuse.

I hope that makes sense?

@gaminghorror - thanks for your input, also thanks for your blog and code examples you have been posting, I've been following them, and your post regarding marketing really gave me some good points to thing about during the development of my next game because I feel this was by far the worst part on my last game.

Cheers, and thanks in advance again :)

AggroPanda
Posted 2 years ago #
riq
Key Master

@AggroPanda:

There are 2 different products:
On the one hand, Sapus Tongue is meant for users who either don't have much experience programming or are new to game development: it contains all the elements of a simple game: Menu Scene, Instructions, Hi-Score, game logic, about scene, integration with admob, sound & music, basic usage of a physics engine (Chipmunk), etc..

On the other hand, LevelSVG is meant for more advanced users: It focuses on more complex games, with more complex scenarios.
In LevelSVG each object is a real object: Hero, Bullet, Platform, Fruit, etc...It is easy to extend, and to add custom objects. It heavily depends on a physics engine (Box2d), so a minimum knowledge of physics is required.
If you are interested you can try "LevelSVG mini game" or download a Preview of the source code from here: http://www.sapusmedia.com/levelsvg/

Posted 2 years ago #
AggroPanda
Member

@riq: thanks for the input, I tried LevelSVG some time ago, I emailed you a couple months ago for a trial version. However, after playing around with it I decovered it wasn't really suitable for the game idea I have at the moment. It seems like a very good 'engine' for platform games and physics based game though.

I've been playing around with cocos2d and the main problem I'm having at the moment is what I've mentioned above. I really want to be enable to encapsulate my classes as much as possible. I just don't know whether it's better to make my classes inherit the CCSprite class, or inherit CCNode / NSObject and then have a sprite property?

Maybe I'm asking questions that I should be asking after I've bought the sapus tongue source and I have a good understanding of how that works?

Thanks for all the input so far guys, these forums alone convice me that cocos2d is definitely the way forward :)

Cheers,

AggroPanda

Posted 2 years ago #
GloryFish
Member

For something like an enemy, I would have it subclass CCNode. This allows it to exist as part of the scene graph and get all of the tasty benefits of being a CCNode.

Then, how it actually shows up in game can be accomplished in different ways. It could have a simple CCSprite property as a child, or you could override the node's drawing code with some GL calls to do line drawing, or you could add a bunch of CCSprites and animate them.

Posted 2 years ago #
MrLucky
Member

Just to guide you in the right direction, Ray Wenderlich have a couple of tutorials that you might wanna take a look at. This one makes an enemy class, bullet class, etc, and is a good way of getting to know cocos2d, as well as the source code for Sapus Toungue do off course :)

The source code for the project is on the bottom of the tutorial :)

http://www.raywenderlich.com/782/harder-monsters-and-more-levels

Posted 2 years ago #
AggroPanda
Member

morning all (well for me at least),

@GloryFish: thanks for clearing that up, when you 'tasty benefits of a being a CCNode' what do you mean? Could you expand on this a little please? I know that most, if not all, cocos2d classes inherit the CCNode class, but I don't really know the benefits of making a subclass of that over a subclass of a CCSprite?

@MrLucky: cheers, I remember reading Ray's first few examples of cocos2d but I hadn't seen this one, and it looks very much like what I'm trying to achieve so thanks a million for that :)

Do you guys think that if I manage to put together an extremely simple game together using the class structure I feel is right, and upload somewhere and link it in here, would someone be able to point me in the right direction, if I've gone off course a little / a lot?

Thanks,

AggroPanda

Posted 2 years ago #
GloryFish
Member

@AggroPanda

CCNodes have a few properties and methods that I find useful such as rotation, scale, the scheduling methods, coordinate conversion, the ability to have children, that sort of thing. Most rendered game objects can make use of those so it makes sense to me to base my custom classes on that.

You get all of those if you subclass CCSprite but then you might be limiting yourself in how that object is drawn.

Now, as always, the "right way" to do something totally depends on the situation.

There are lots of more specialized classes in cocos2d, farther down the inheritance hierarchy, that might make more sense to subclass in certain situations. If you're making a special menu item, for example, you would probably get a lot of benefit from subclassing one of the CCMenu nodes and building off of that.

My suggestion is mainly geared towards the type of enemy class you described. If you start off with it just being a CCSprite and then later-on you decide that it should really be drawn as three animated sprites with some sort of particle effect, you might run into trouble when the code that uses the enemy expects the sprite methods to be there. The idea is to really separate what an enemy is (something with health and speed that can be destroyed) from how it's drawn (a single sprite, many sprites, a GL call).

Now, with all that being said, I also think that in most cases you are better off building something simple that works than spending a lot of time building something complex that is more difficult to maintain. If you know your enemies are going to be simple sprites then don't spend a lot of time overengineering them.

I think one of the real strengths of cocos2d is that is works really well with a whole spectrum of complexity. You can have a simple game with a single scene and a few CCSprites moving around an interacting with the player. All of that is pretty easy to set up in a few lines of code.

But, if you need to have more structure with a whole class hierarchy, scene management, or you need to step outside of the lines with some of your own code, cocos doesn't fight you. It's really liberating.

Posted 2 years ago #
AggroPanda
Member

@GloryFish Sorry about the late reply, I've just been really busy with another project. I understand what you mean about using CCNode instead of CCSprite.

Thanks for all the advice you have all given me, I'll probably pick this thread back up once I have time to play around with cocos2d some more.

Thanks,

AggroPanda

Posted 2 years ago #

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