Cocos2D-iPhone and project setup

I’ve been building iPhone applications for a while now and some very simple games using UIKit but unfortunately UIKIT as it stands is just not cut out for games. So I’ve been looking at different frameworks that I could use, and after trying a few I stumbled across the fantastic Cocos2D framework.

I’m always a bit cautious when it comes to learning frameworks, preferring to read the docs, see examples and perform some small test apps before really committing to learning how to develop using it. After doing just that I took the plunge and began developing using it and found that it’s a great framework to have under your belt for iPhone games.

So for the last month I’ve been hammering away at creating a small iPhone game using the fantastic Cocos2D-iPhone framework. The game is really just a test bed to get to grips with everything in Cocos2D land, and there’s a lot!

My main gripe with Cocos2D is the documentation of the project. It’s just not that detailed but it’s definitely improving. What the Cocos2D team (riq?) have provided us with are an excellent set of test apps that come bundled with the source. These tests show lots of the functionalities of the framework in use and are excellent resource to use when it comes to learning Cocos2D.  If you ever need to see how implement AtlasSprites for example, open the AtlasSprite test and you will have a wealth of source to read, learn and use.

I’m hoping to put together a few tutorials together on my travels down the Cocos2D path, hopefully they might be helpful to some of you out there or even if your just curious about the framework. Give it a whirl!

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PureMVC

For quite a while now I’ve been looking at different AS3 frameworks that I could adhere my code to to make it easier to scale as the project grows, more reusable and easier to understand for others. I’ve always wanted to pick up Cliff’s PureMVC but I’ve found few tutorials on the net that really get granular enough to explain how and why to use it for total new comers like myself.

I’ve spent the last few days learning from various little tutorials and I’m hoping to start using the framework in all my work projects. If all goes well I’m going to start piecing together quite a large multipost tutorial on here that will help in picking up PureMVC if you’ve never used it before.

anton.

Just a quick note. It’s slowly dawning on me that to do anything that invloves any heavy shifting of pixels on the iPhone….. Your going to need OpenGL. I’ve just read the Keith Peters is already ahead of the game and started it. I’ve taken his recommendation and ordered some mystical OpenGL bible called “The Red Book”…. oooooh!

I’ve spent a few hours looking at OpenGL tutorials online, it looks pretty fun actually but I can already see it’s going to be a mammoth a task to start creating converters for 3d studio max models and lighting, physics, bsp importer etc

Why re-invent the wheel with OpenGL, physics? Here’s some links I’ve found of people already doing this stuff:
http://code.google.com/p/sio2/
http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/
http://code.google.com/p/oolongengine/

http://unity3d.com/unity/
http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-2d/iphone
http://www.garagegames.com/products/tge/iphone

I’ve seperated the Unity and Garage Games frameworks as I’m currently looking at purchasing either of these two. I’ve played around with Unity 3D and I absolutely love it. The only problem is the licence fee’s for iPhone are through the roof! shame.

I’m really excited about iPhone development. The community is young and has a real buzz around it. It’s also great to see some big names and familiar faces from the Flash community working with the platform. Exciting times!

anton.

I stopped development for 2 days while I’ve been rolling the game framework architecture (try saying that fast, yeah) around in my head, trying to think of the most logical way to lay everything out.

Usually when making applications or games I tend to jump straight in and get my hands dirty and that’s exactly what I’ve done this time, so I’ve tried to step back and put more thought in to the framework. Here’s the result.
 

application heirarchy

You’ll have to get used to the spiderlike handwriting. This is a rough (but pretty accurate I think) version of what I’d like to create. This is all pretty anal I know but it’s a breath of fresh air to actually have a good understanding of exactly what I’m going to create rather than get deeper in to the development cycle and realise I’ve planned it all wrong.

The next step I think is to try UML for the first time and see if I can map it all out. If anyone knows any good tutorials/resources on UML and AS3 Stub code please give me a prod with them :)

anton.

If you’ve read my end of year review post then you’ll know I’m planning on creating a lot more games as a sideline and hopefully getting them sponsored. I’ve been slowly piecing together a framework of sorts that I’ll be using with these games and I’ve been looking through my library of classes and found two that I’ll hopefully implement in to my framework.

1. Navigation.as – This is currently a State Machine class that I use to manage the state of the visual display. Inside is a predefined Tween in transition and a Tween out transition and is used like: _navigation.showContent(_navigation.SHOWTITLE);

2. AudioManager.as – this is a Singleton class with a list of sounds and executed like: _audioManager.playIntro();

I’ve come across a post of GamingYourWay’s nGFX on his own bespoke ScreenFramework. My Navigation.as works similarly as I tend to have each view or screen self contained and it simple calls a startFunction or stopFunction depending on the views state, but I liked his idea of having it as a Singleton with a list of all available screens so I wont have to post around a load of class references. I’ll have to abstract or even create a new State Machine to control this framework. I also hadn’t thought of abstracting the transition code and pass it along as a parameter. Nice post nGFX! 

I’m unsure what to do with the AudioManager yet, it works ok as it is but I’m sure I can find a better way to implement it. More to come.

anton.