This is an update to the Mobile Game Engine Popularity Index I published 2.5 months ago.
Game Engine Popularity on Stackoverflow.com
stackoverflow tag popularity
Since November’s chart I made sure the tags I’m most interested in (cocos2d-iphone, cocos2d-x, sprite-kit) were properly applied to all questions.
Furthermore I update at least the past 6 months for each tag, which caused the graph to change noticeably. This may be due to policing the site, where users remove tags or retag questions. The net result is that there are now recent months with fewer questions for some engines compared to November’s chart. In particular this flattened the up-down curve of cocos2d-iphone. Continue reading »
Topics: Overall interest in cocos2d is waning. Unity and libgdx fighting for 1st place. Sprite Kit skyrocketing from day one.
This sums it up. Now for the details. Since my last game engine popularity measurement I tried to improve and streamline the process.
Game Engine Popularity on Stackoverflow.com
For stackoverflow.com data I’m searching for tagged questions created in a specific month. The search query looks like this:
[cocos2d-x] is:question created:2013-11
I repeated this for every tag for every month as far back as there were questions with the given tag. Continue reading »
With yesterday’s release of iOS 7 and hence Sprite Kit, many cocos2d developers will face this question sooner or later: switch to Sprite Kit or Kobold Kit or stick with cocos2d-iphone or perhaps move on to cocos2d-x?
I’ll give you some guidance and things to consider …
Sprite Kit / Kobold Kit
Sprite Kit made quite the splash. There are new tutorials coming out by the minute. Two books will be available within days after release. Several high profile tutorial & starterkit authors have jumped on the bandwagon. Tool developers are hard at work adding Sprite Kit support. Instructors are already offering new mobile game development courses based on Sprite Kit. Heck I even started a new game engine based on Sprite Kit: Kobold Kit.
With almost everyone jumping ship, it seems a safe bet to jump ship, too. You’re guaranteed to get excellent documentation from Apple, plus a stability of the framework until at least iOS 7.1 and even then Apple is known to carry on supporting deprecated methods for several versions. It’s easy to learn, and once learned you won’t be thrown off guard by new releases. And the developer community will soon surpass that of cocos2d-iphone. Continue reading »
How do you measure the popularity of a game engine and compare it with others?
Reminded of the TIOBE Programming Language Index and the Transparent Programming Language Popularity Index I couldn’t find a comparable site measuring game engine popularity.
So I sat down and concluded that I can do a simple manual test rather quickly. These are the measurements anyone can take easily:
- Forum topic, post and member counts (if available)
- Stackoverflow.com and gamedev.stackexchange.com tag counts
- Google search query results
Popularity of Cocos2D Variants
Let’s begin by comparing the popularity of the various Cocos2D variants. The difficulty here lies in properly excluding all the other cocos2d variants. That cocos2d-iphone is commonly referred to as just “cocos2d” makes it difficult to measure just the cocos2d-iphone popularity and to remove that number from all other engine variants.
I tried to overcome this by including or excluding specific tags in Stackoverflow and Gamedev searches:
- cocos2d-iphone: [cocos2d-iphone] or [cocos2d] -[python] -[java] -[javascript] -[c++] -[html5]
- cocos2d-x: [cocos2d-x] or [cocos2d] [c++] -[python] -[java] -[javascript] -[html5]
- cocos2d-android: [cocos2d-android] or [cocos2d] [android] -[cocos2d-x] -[c++] -[python] -[objective-c] -[html5]
- cocos2d-javascript: [cocos2d-js] or [cocos2d-javascript] or [cocos2d] [javascript]
- cocos2d (python): [cocos2d-python] or [cocos2d] [python]
- cocos2d-xna: [cocos2d-xna] or [cocos2d] [xna]
- cocos2d-html5: [cocos2d-html5]
- cocos3d: [cocos3d]
- kobold2d: [kobold2d]
- cocosbuilder: [cocosbuilder]
Stackoverflow.com tag search results:
Okay, let’s try that again with cocos2d-iphone removed so the other variants can be compared in relation to each other: Continue reading »
Looking for a Sprite Kit Game Engine? Check out Kobold Kit!
Two weeks ago I blogged about Why Apple Created Sprite Kit and What It Means For Cocos2D.
Two weeks since WWDC 2013 is also a good time to take a first look at the impact of Sprite Kit on the economy. Everything and everyone seems to be in turmoil right now as far as 2D game development for iOS and related tools and services is concerned.
To understand the impact of Sprite Kit, let’s first look at Kobold Touch for which I have actual data to back up my impressions.
KoboldTouch Signup Rate - Bummer!
I have been taking notes of the exact days new KoboldTouch users signed up in an Excel sheet. I found it entertaining and thought that maybe some day I will have a use for it.
That day has come. I can present you the KT sign up rate from post-WWDC dates June 10th to 24th with the sign-up rate of the same two-week span in the preceding months: Continue reading »
This is a guest post by Nat Weiss, author of the cocos2d-iphone RPG Game Engine and the cocos2d-x Paralaxer Game Kit. Today he shares his experience working with the two most popular cocos2d game engines, and explains how and where they’re different.
He also needs more beta-testers for his latest game: Awesome Heroes Arena.
Over the last year, my bro Kristopher Horton and I have been developing a realtime Multiplayer-Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game for tablets with cocos2d-x. The game’s called Awesome Heroes Arena and we are finally at the point of taking on beta testers: here’s the beta sign up if you are interested.
Steffen thought it would be interesting if I shared some thoughts on switching from cocos2d-iphone to cocos2d-x. What’s it like? What things do I miss?
