Cocos2D Framework

dmreichard on 2011/04/19 22:49

Was wondering how many users employed the Cocos2D framework for building their pyweek game or previous games and what their thoughts were on it. I had heard mention of it before, but never really came into contact with it until recently. Scene management seems nice (quite similar to what I've done in the past plus a few bells and whistles.)  The CocosNode objects seem at a superficial level to be a nice design.

With all that said, my experience with it has been approximately...1-2 hours? So I haven't mucked around with it enough to place fair judgement... good or bad.

What is your favorite thing about it? Least favorite? Pros and Cons?

Thanks!

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Comments

gizmo_thunder on 2011/04/20 07:02:

I havent' really used it but i really love scene transition animations. I really wanted to look at it only after watching this entry this year. 

richard on 2011/04/20 22:25:

I've used it pretty much every time since cocos was created. Its scene graph (cocosnode) offers some power at little cost. The scene management is really nice, and layers make organising the display quite easy. Also I like the scrolling management code (that I contributed ;-)

On the downside it can sometimes be difficult to figure out how to correctly extend it from an API user's perspective. It would be nice if it had a clearer API for things like setup and tear down of a scenes and layers, and for handling custom drawing. Also the way some things like text and sprites are implemented mean that there can be several levels of indirection to access information, set properties or just figure out how something works.

dmreichard on 2011/04/21 01:54:

Thank you for the clear explanation Richard. That sums things up quite nicely for me.

Another question came to mind while I was exploring the cocos2d.org website. For starters, the Programming Guide wasn't much help other than giving a brief overview of the framework. The API reference has been a good source of information, and I refer to it quite frequently. Are there any other sites that are centered around the Python version of the framework? Any example or article Google turns up is related to the iPhone version, which I'm hardly interested in until I decide to invest in an up to date Mac (I have an old iMacG4 =/ )

Between the API docs and sample code I'm sure I'll get used to it, was just curious to know if there were any other sources of information besides those.

Thanks again!

richard on 2011/04/22 08:18:

The tests in the source can be a good place to start for examples of how the code is used.

dmreichard on 2011/04/30 00:46:

Been having fun making another game using Cocos, really liking it so far. Seems like actions can be very buggy however, as well as effects. For example, if I use the shake effect (simulating an earthquake) then the textured quad vertices seem completely messed up after the effect ends, and my sprites are bubbled in places when they pass over that region.

These shortcomings are easily overlooked with the easy to use scene management and scene graph code though. And the scrolling manager code you contributed is super awesome, I'm using it for a top-down space exploration/shooter game I'm making. :) 

claxo on 2011/04/30 02:56:

@dmreichard If you can provide a sample showing the defect in the shake effect, it would be cool to open an issue at cocos issue tracker:
http://code.google.com/p/los-cocos/issues/list

dmreichard on 2011/05/01 01:18:

Honestly I don't know if it is a bug or it is me. I'll have to look in to it a little more then, however honestly I stopped using effects and actions all together because I've been having nothing but trouble with them. I was using a scrolling manager so not sure if that has anything to do with it... oh well.