Cocos2D is a rendering engine. Note the emphasis. 90% of what it does is draw stuff onto the screen and animate it. It adds some input processing and scheduling and the rest is up to you.
A game engine is to cocos2d what cocos2d is to OpenGL. The list of things I want in an actual game engine is long.
The iOS mobile platform has advanced far enough that a pure rendering engine just isn’t that much of a help anymore. We’re effectively moving back towards where we were back in 2008 if we don’t start pushing the boundaries, hard.
Here are some ideas I have for and would like to see in a 2D game engine, in no particular order. It is not a feature list for Kobold Kit, but it does reflect what I want to make possible with / encourage for Kobold Kit. Continue reading »
In this episode of LearnCocosTV I demonstrate how to write and animate a Cocos2D scene with KoboldScript.
KoboldScript is more than just writing the same Cocos2D code but with a scripting language. Most other scripting language bindings for game engines simply translate the game engine’s C/C++/Objective-C API 1:1 (more or less) without introducing new concepts, adding more comfort by simplifying common tasks, or utilizing the powerful features of whatever the scripting language has to offer.
KoboldScript goes three steps further than that - one by tightly integrating the setup of scenes via defining the node properties in a tool-friendly tree structure (Lua table) that you can both write manually or create programmatically using Lua’s built-in features.
Two, by using Statemachines to drive game logic while also providing free Lua scripting via user-specified Lua callback functions. And three, by adding a (MVC-ish) component system with re-usable abilities and behaviors to all Cocos2D nodes.
Unfortunately I ran out of time at the end so I couldn’t even say goodbye. I hope you don’t mind. 
Episode #6 - One Small Script for Man …
• KoboldScript Demonstration
o How to create Scenes with Sprites, etc
o How Abilities & Behaviors work
• iDevBlogADay: Asynchronous Texture Loading
o Cocos2D Webcam Viewer speedup
