It’s hard to find the right words to describe the launch of KoboldTouch. I can’t think of anything else but WOW! right now. 
I can’t wait to hear what you have to say about KoboldTouch, and then act on your feedback.
For those who were just waiting for the launch:
Sign up on the KoboldTouch product page to get access to KoboldTouch and Essential Cocos2D.
The rest of this post is a summary of what I wrote before on these two-products-in-one. Actually, I think of KoboldTouch & Essential Cocos2D as being much more a service than products. And it’s a full time commitment from myself.
This calls for music!
Since I started working on KoboldTouch a couple things fell into place. Mainly that it would:
Provide what Cocos2D leaves up to its users. Fixes what Cocos2D does badly. Adds what Cocos2D doesn’t do at all. Eases development with Cocos2D and accommodates actual developer needs.
While Cocos2D is moving towards cross-platform with their Javascript API, KoboldTouch will focus on adding & improving game design features.
I have a hunch most Cocos2D developers have better iOS/Mac integration and game-specific features higher up on their wish list than cross-platform. Most of you are indies, hobbyists, pragmatists and Apple enthusiasts without the need or resources to do cross-platform development.
UPDATE: KoboldTouch is now available!
KoboldTouch: Spiritual Successor
I first started working on KoboldTouch a few weeks back. I initially undersold it as a “MVC wrapper for Cocos2D”. With what I have in mind spiritual successor of Cocos2D is more like it.
It’s going to be a framework to program iOS & Mac games in, where best practices evolve naturally, where Cocoa programmers feel right at home, where beginners are not left in a void * EXC_BAD_ACCESS … and where Cocos2D is still at the heart of it.
KoboldTouch takes control over Cocos2D, to allows users to implement best practices naturally. Cocos2D provides the view, KoboldTouch provides the controllers, models and the framework to write your code in.
Here’s what I’m working on. Hopefully this answers the questions I’ve been getting, in particular those about KoboldScript. And what’s happening with it, when is it coming, when can we stop using Corona SDK, etc.
UPDATE: KoboldTouch is now available!
Well then, let’s start with …
KoboldTouch
Huh, what?
Well, the short answer is: KoboldTouch is an MVC wrapper around Cocos2D.
The long answer … let me start by saying that Cocos2D is suboptimal. From a code architecture point of view. Cocos2D has no concept of structure besides views (nodes), and doesn’t encourage structure in your own code. It happily lets users subclass views in order to add data and game logic.
I can’t stop but feel helpless to see beginners learning the things we’ve abandoned 20 years ago as bad practice. Yet Cocos2D code is written by subclassing views as if it were the most natural thing to do. It’s also the very thing Apple tells you not to do.
The result are projects lacking in what is called separation of concerns. It’s not just about experience. Without a clear architectural model frequently reminding you to consider separation of concerns, anyone is more likely to end up creating a blend of design patterns at best, or worse:
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KoboldTouch brings you the best 2D game development experience for Apple’s platforms!
KoboldTouch is the only Objective-C, ARC-enabled 2D game engine built on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. Write ambitious games with greater ease!
KoboldTouch is also a continuously evolving, customer driven game development framework for iOS & Mac OS X, designed by game industry veterans to incorporate game development best practices and decades of experience.
Learn more about KoboldTouch features and what’s in it for you:
Open the “About KoboldTouch” Page for Details
Not quite ready for KoboldTouch yet?
Fill out the KoboldTouch Survey. Let us know what you think of KT and how to make it better.
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Learn Cocos2D 2 - Game Development for iOS will finally be available on September 19th 2012. Completely updated for cocos2d-iphone 2.0, Kobold2D 2.0 and ARC.
But that isn’t all!
Essential Cocos2D - The Definitive Reference is an online documentation for cocos2d-iphone 2.0 and Kobold2D. More details soon. In the meantime, here’s a sample chapter about How Draw Order Works in Cocos2D.
UPDATE: Essential Cocos2D is now available!
What’s the difference?
… but not quite out yet. If you can’t wait until August 29 you can always buy the Alpha eBook version now (as PDF) and receive the final eBook version for free (as PDF, ePUB and MOBI) when it’s available.
I’ve updated the book’s product page and included links where you can download the source code for the 3rd edition.
Learn cocos2d 2 (Third Edition)
Release Date: August 29, 2012
What’s New
Cocos2D v2.0 is used throughout the book. To my knowledge this makes the Learn Cocos2D 2 book the first book to cover cocos2d-iphone v2.0.
ARC (automatic reference counting) is used exclusively in the book. All descriptions and source code projects have been updated to ARC, and 12 Cocos2D ARC-enabled Template Projects are included in the source code download. The book contains a description on how to enable ARC in a cocos2d project. Working with ARC means having to write and learn less code while being able to write faster code with fewer bugs. Win, win, win.
You can now also follow the book while using Kobold2D. Any differences between cocos2d v2.0 and Kobold2D v2.0 are explicitly mentioned in the book. In fact, you’ll have to work through less text and code if you use Kobold2D.
The book’s source code is compatible with Xcode 4.4, Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and iOS 6. It is of course also tested to work with Xcode 4.3, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and iOS 5.
Learn more about the Learn Cocos2D 2 book here.
Example ARC project. Pretty awesome.
Therefore I decided to enable ARC in all twelve standard cocos2d Xcode project templates for both cocos2d versions (v1.1 and v2.0), both platforms (iOS and Mac OS), both physics engines (Box2D and Chipmunk) and publish them on github.
You can download the ARC-enabled cocos2d template projects either as ZIP file or TAR file.
Get the latest versions of Kobold2D from the download page and more details in the Release Notes.
Kobold2D v1.1.1 has been updated to include the latest version of cocos2d-iphone v1.1 (beta2b) from May 3rd this year. This version supports the -ipad and -ipadhd suffixes.
Both Kobold2D v1.1.1 and v2.0.1 have been updated to include the latest Chipmunk v6.1.1 and Chipmunk SpaceManager v0.1.3. Although unfortunately SpaceManager still isn’t fully compatible with cocos2d-iphone 2.0 because it still won’t rotate the sprites.
Again both versions include an important fix for KKInput: I’ve received several reports where users complained that KKInput is missing some events. Specifically the “ThisFrame” variants were prone to never fire. This is now fixed.
Line-Drawing Game Starterkit: ARC + cocos2d v1.1 & v2.0
While I’ve been meddling with Kobold2D updates I found this to be the perfect opportunity to update the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit as well. You now get four versions of the project, two are using cocos2d-iphone v1.1 and the other two have been updated to work with cocos2d-iphone v2.0.
And each of the two cocos2d-iphone version projects allows you to choose between the ARC enabled project or the classic manual reference counting project. The included readme document explains this in greater detail. Suffice it to say you can simply choose with which to start: cocos2d v1.1 or v2.0 and either with ARC enabled or manual reference counting.
Of course I strongly recommend the cocos2d-iphone v2.0 version with ARC enabled, seeing how the old devices have an ever diminishing, probably below 15% market share.
And do use ARC, it’s really a no-brainer not to bother with reference counting anymore.
If you’re an existing customer, you should have received an update email with your download link.
