Learn & Master Cocos2D Game Development

Scheduled for release on November 7th, 2011.

Co-Author: Andreas Löw

I’m proud to have Andreas Löw (@CodeAndWeb) as a co-author for the 2nd Edition of the Learn Cocos2D book! Andreas is the developer of the indispensable Cocos2D (and other game engine) tools TexturePacker and PhysicsEditor.

Andreas volunteered to make all the necessary changes to replace Zwoptex with the more state-of-the-art TexturePacker, and VertexHelper with the much more powerful PhysicsEditor. He also provided the new graphics for the Shoot’em Up and Pinball projects, as well as making them Retina compatible.

New Chapters: UIKit Integration & Kobold2D with Cocos3D

Two entirely new chapters were added to the 2nd edition:

The UIKit Integration chapter not only explains how to add UIKit views to a Cocos2D app. It also shows you how to setup your view hierarchy so that you can add UIKit views both in the foreground and in the background of the Cocos2D OpenGL view. In addition you’ll learn how to perform touch hit testing so that touches are properly propagated from the UIKit views in the foreground, to the Cocos2D nodes, to the UIKit views in the background. And as if that weren’t enough, I’ll show you how to add Cocos2D to an existing UIKit app: how to add the cocos2d sources to your project, how to create the GLView in your nib, how to setup Cocos2D to be cooperative with your UIKit views and finally starting and stopping the Cocos2D renderer.

The Kobold2D chapter is an introduction to Kobold2D with its Lua based startup configuration, streamlined installation and project create & upgrade process, and additional convenience features such as KKInput and better cross-platform (Mac & iOS) support. The Doodle Drop project from Chapter 4 was ported to Kobold2D with a few simple changes thanks to KKInput. I also introduce you to Cocos3D (included in Kobold2D and how easy it is to create an augmented reality app with Cocos3D.

Additional Changes

The entire descriptions, the source code and the figures have all been updated to Cocos2D v1.0.1, Xcode 4, iOS 5.0 and the latest versions of the tools described throughout the book: TexturePacker, PhysicsEditor, Glyph Designer, Particle Designer and Tiled. Learn Cocos2D 2nd Edition is now the most up-to-date book for Cocos2D game development. All the source code projects discussed in the book will continue to be maintained as part of Kobold2D.

Several chapters have been completely overhauled, all erratas have been fixed, and many smaller improvements have been made throughout the book. Your feedback and a very thorough technical and copy-editing review phase have helped to greatly improve the code and a lot of descriptions. Overall the book has now more figures, screenshots and diagrams to illustrate key concepts.

In particular Chapter 3 “Essentials” has been significantly improved to provide an even better introduction for beginners to essential Cocos2D programming topics. Most notably the Cocos2D scene hierarchy and how it works as well as the still-mysterious anchor point have gotten a more in depth treatment. The CCDirector is treated more thoroughly, in particular the director types and its pros and cons are explained as well as best practices for pushing and popping scenes. Keyboard and Mouse event handling for Cocos2D Mac apps has been added. More examples for using a variety of Actions and creating action sequences are present as well.