In this episode of the Cocos2D Podcast it’s me who is being interviewed. I’m talking about Kobold2D, which is my take on keeping the Cocos2D wheel spinning. Over the past 2.5 years I learned a lot about Cocos2D, and I came across plenty of things that I feel should really be corrected. Kobold2D is that course correction towards a better overall user experience.
In this podcast you’ll learn more about the project’s goals, its history and future. I’m also giving away the download link for the Kobold2D Preview builds.
A couple months ago I wrote a tutorial explaining how to upgrade Cocos2D in an existing project.
I was able to cut the description down to only five concrete steps, but there’s still a lot of text to follow and caveats to consider. I designed Kobold2D exactly to make it easy to solve the issue of upgrading projects to newer versions of the game engine.
This Kobold2D FAQ article explains the difference between Corona SDK and iPhone Wax library, and evaluates the existing and future options for Lua scripting in Kobold2D.
A new episode of the Cocos2D Podcast is now live. This time we’re joined by Daniel Sperl, author of the Sparrow Framework Objective-C game engine for iOS which is based on the ActionScript (Flash) API design.
Note: the Sparrow website is currently reported as “possibly malware” by Safari and Google. The culprit has been removed and the site is safe to visit. Read this blog post for more info about what happened.
Daniel has a secret he shared with us even though he couldn’t really say any details until the official announcement in a few weeks. Cocos2D also gets a couple honorable (or dishonorable) mentions as we compare it with Sparrow Framework, and come to the conclusion that documentation-wise it is leaps and bounds ahead of Cocos2D.
Cocos2D Podcast: Daniel Sperl (Sparrow Framework Developer)
Previous Cocos2D Podcast: Marketing your App
I forgot to blog about the previous Cocos2D Podcast in which Azam and I talk about marketing your iPhone app.
Cocos2D Podcast: Marketing your iPhone App
Unrelated but important: Steve Jobs resigns
In case you haven’t heard, Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple on August 24th, 2011. Here’s Steve’s (short and to the point) letter to the Board of Directors. Tim Cook was named as his successor. Read the press release.
I never really cared for who’s boss of a big company, just enough to get the ridicule. But Steve Jobs leaving .. I can’t help but feel sad.
I believe this is for one reason in particular: very, very few CEOs actually have a vision and follow it through. Or have the (will)power to follow it through without being bent or influenced through challenges and oppositions by corporate and outside politics. Steve was able to retain all of the drive, dedication and willpower that you have when you just start out as a company or individual trying to make a really great product that you believe in and want to be proud of.
Most large companies are simply unable to create such products because too many people work on each product, and there’s lots of money and risk involved in the process which, more often than not, turns potentially great companies into conservative, boring companies making lackluster products, following consumer trends. Apple under Steve Jobs has been the exception. Steve has repeatedly anticipated consumer trends, even created them through the power that is the Apple brand.
The really, really sad part however is what hasn’t been said. Steve being unable to meet his duties paints a grim outlook on his health. Not mentioning his health in his letter and Apple’s press release even more so. I just wish for him that it’s not as bad as one can imagine it to be if it forces someone of Steve’s caliber to resign from his position. Good luck and all the best, Steve!
The first preview release of Kobold2D (v1.0.0 preview 1) will be available for download on:
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
Semi-Public Release
To be able to download the Kobold2D preview version(s) you will have to be signed up to my Kobold2D / Cocos2D Newsletter:
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On the release day I’ll send out an email with download instructions. Those signing up after the initial release date will receive the download instructions in the welcome email.
Why Newsletter-only?
Initially I want to limit the number of users downloading and using Kobold2D preview versions to those who are really looking forward to it. I hope that this will improve chances of you having a good first experience and me receiving better feedback. After all, it’s the first time I’m releasing Kobold2D to the wild and I’m careful not to release it to the masses right away.
The final public version of Kobold2D will not require a signup of any kind. And it’ll be free of course. Depending on the issues reported by previewers the final version should be available around 4-8 weeks later (October).
The Goal
Kobold2D users should never have to run a bash script, ever. Any project or asset management task most users will want to perform should be done with a visual tool.
The Problem
I mentioned before that I had problems turning the Kobold2D project templates into the Xcode 4 Project Template format. In fact, it turned out to be impossible due to the nature of Kobold2D’s workspace setup.
Since I want to have a wide variety of project templates in Kobold2D, and definitely more than the three rudimentary templates that cocos2d-iphone offers, I needed some way to allow users to start new projects based on a template.
The Solution
What I came up with is the Kobold2D Project Starter Tool:
Simple and elegant. This tool scans the projects in Kobold2D templates folder, which are regular Xcode projects with a common naming scheme (eg. _Hello-Kobold2D-Template_), and presents them to the user including a description.
Select a project template, give it a name and click Create. The tool will copy the template project to the Kobold2D folder next to all the other projects. All occurrences of _XXXX-Template_ are renamed to the user supplied project name (which is cleaned to remove illegal characters). Then the project is added to the Kobold2D.xcworkspace which the tool will open right away.
The Benefits
I think the biggest benefit by far is that anyone can turn his or her Xcode project into a template, simply by following the naming scheme. Anyone can create and distribute their own Kobold2D project templates.
Note: in the screenshot there are only 7 templates listed. I’ll definitely add more for the Kobold2D v1.0 release, most will be based on projects discussed in my Learn Cocos2D book. The first preview version (v0.9x) of Kobold2D will be available in about two weeks.
My Line-Drawing Game Starterkit is now up to date with the latest versions of cocos2d (v1.0.1), iOS (compatible with iOS 3.1 and higher, including iOS 5.0), Xcode (compatible with Xcode 3.2 and above, including Xcode 4.0 on Snow Leopard and Xcode 4.2 on Mac OS X Lion).
Existing customers will receive an email with instructions on how to download the updated version of the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit.
Ferries HD was made with the Line-Drawing Starterkit
I’ve added another cool game made to the Line-Drawing Starterkit product page – Ferries HD by Thomas Busse:
Note: the game is not included in the Starterkit. It’s a game that was made with the Starterkit and serves as a great example of what you can achieve with the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit.
Price dropped to $99 (from $119)
I dropped the price of the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit to $99 in anticipation of upcoming commercial source code products that I’m working on. More on that in due time, first things first (Learn Cocos2D 2nd Edition and Kobold2D).
What about Kobold2D?
I know, I know. Kobold2D isn’t too far out. I anticipate the first preview (beta) release in August. Stay alert.
What’s left to do at a minimum is to write the Project Starter tool (to give you the convenience of Xcode 4 Project Templates but with more flexibility), setup the website with the “getting started” documentation plus API references and perform some general project cleanup.
And when is the Learn Cocos2D 2nd Edition coming out?
It looks like the new edition of the book will be out in October, roughly two months later than anticipated.
On the positive side I’m working with a new editor who brought in a fresh perspective from which the book greatly benefits. The delay also allowed me to make more substantial improvements than initially planned.
In particular Chapter 3 (Essentials) was completely overhauled to better explain the fundamental concepts of Cocos2D, and you’ll find the book to be more visually rich in general. For example this exploded view drawing is used to explain the relationship of Scenes, Layers and Nodes:
The book’s source code already uses the recently released Cocos2D v1.0.1 and I will continue to update the book’s source code for the v1.x line of Cocos2D. Several of the game projects discussed in the book will also be ported to become Kobold2D project templates.
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