I updated the Cocos2D Webcam Viewer project from a previous article to download a file from the web asynchronously, and then load its texture asynchronously as well. You can now switch between the two modes to see how asynchronous operations almost completely removed the pauses the app experiences in synchronous mode. Just tap the screen to switch modes.
Continue reading »
To visualize the lag I added a constantly moving sprite at the bottom. This makes the lag easier to spot than a framerate counter. I also removed all error checking code from this article to make the code easier to read. As always you can find the Cocos2D Webcam Viewer source code with full error checking on the LearnCocos2D github repository.
I thought I’d post a very early result of the KoboldScript scene setup. This scene was scripted entirely with KoboldScript with about 50 lines of code:
Below you’ll see the part of the Lua script that created this scene. In fact it’s not so much code as it is defining data, which behind the scenes calls the node functions like setPosition and setColor for you. Continue reading »
KoboldScript is coming! KoboldScript brings Lua scripting to Cocos2D and Kobold2D, with Objective-C performance for the StateMachine part and faster-than-Wax performance for the runtime Lua functions.
More details and first looks at some early development scripts in this LearnCocosTV episode. I’ll have something more visual to show in 2-4 weeks.
Episode #5 – Pretty State Machine
• KoboldScript: Lua Scripting for Cocos2D & Kobold2D Continue reading »
o Poll: Which scripting language for Cocos2D?
o iDevBlogADay: Text Editors for Lua
• KoboldScript combines:
o Lua StateMachine generator (full ObjC performance)
o Runtime Lua functions (faster than Wax)
In this episode you can see the Cocos2D Webcam Viewer in action. I also show you how to update a sprite’s texture while your app is running just by saving an updated version of the image, and how cool that actually is!
The second half of the video is devoted to explaining my work schedule. I’d like to believe that I have a unique and interesting solution to planning but I’m sure in some way or another it’s already been implemented.
I’m certainly influenced by Agile Development as much as I am by books like Getting Things Done and The 4-Hour Workweek. My revelation was simply this: stop wasting time planning tasks! Instead, plan your time and how you spend it.
Episode #4 – I see Road Nuts
• iDevBlogADay: Cocos2D Webcam Viewer
o Mac OS X Webserver File Download
• Kobold2D v1.0.2 released
• Poll: Which scripting language for Cocos2D?
• My work schedule explained
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could update your game’s assets while your app is running? It turns out you can, and it’s not even very complicated.
Whether you want to tweak a game setting or experiment with a variety of image styles on the fly, this will be one of the things you wish you had been using all along! Either for faster development or as a design feature for your game.
In this case, we’ll build a New York Traffic Webcam viewer with Cocos2D. You will learn how to download files to your app at runtime with the iOS SDK and cocos2d-iphone, and how to check if the file on the web server has actually been modified.
Along the way you’ll understand how to use the Mac OS X built-in web server to speed up your development by replacing game assets on the fly. By copying files to a specific directory on your Mac you can make immediate changes to your running app!
And you don’t need any experience with HTML, Apache, or any other web server or web services technology. In fact, I consider myself to be an web-illiterate because I’ve hardly done anything programming-related with web services and servers in the past.
As usual, the project is available from my LearnCocos2D github repository under the MIT License. The project’s name is Cocos2D-UpdateFilesFromWebServer. To improve readability of the article I removed error checking from the code in the article.
After a holiday-season hiatus (Happy New Year btw!) LearnCocosTV is back. This episode is somewhat shorter because I had a lot of catching up to do and a lot of chores which aren’t exactly show-worthy. But I did manage to port most of the Kobold2D projects to Cocos2D 2.0 beta. Too bad they look just the same as before.
A bi-weekly Show & Tell about Cocos2D, Kobold2D and iOS/OSX development by Steffen Itterheim.
Episode #3 – Two And A Half Nuts
• Updating Kobold2D to use Cocos2D v2.0 (beta)
• iDevBlogADay: Tips for updating to Cocos2D v2.0
• iDevBlogADay Source Code available on github
This quick comparison sheet gives you all the info to decide whether to use Cocos2D 1.x or Cocos2D 2.x. Contrary to most programs, a higher version number doesn’t infer “better” or “more”. There are pros and cons for both versions.
At the time of this writing the decision really only boils down to whether you want to use shaders and whether you must be able to deploy your app to 1st & 2nd generation devices. See for yourself, it’s that simple:
Cocos2D v1.x(+) compatible with all iOS devices |
Cocos2D v2.x(+) OpenGL ES 2.0 shader programs |
All other differences to this day are minor, and most new features and bugfixes have been migrated back and forth between versions. For beginners I strongly recommend using v1.x as there’s a lot more documentation available for this version. Those who have no interest in writing shader programs can also safely use the v1.x branch without missing out.
Beginning today until and including Dec 26th January 1st 2012 the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit is only $49,50 instead of $99,00 (50% off).
Just enter this coupon code when you make the purchase:
MERRYXMAS
Merry Xmas everyone – you deserve it! 
PS: I’ll be practically offline until the first week in January, but I’ll make sure to have a short iDevBlogADay post ready for you on Dec 29th.
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