I keep running into posts where users ask how fast cocos2d is, or why their particular code is slow.
I compiled a procedures checklist that you should go through before reporting performance issues.
I also tried to explain why the question of how fast cocos2d is has no real-world relevance.
Then i added a link to All-Seeing Interactive’s cocos2d Performance Tips as this is such a great post! It covers a lot of topics:
- Profiling with Instruments
- Testing on different devices
- Textures and Texture Atlases
- Speeding up loading times
- Reducing memory usage
- Flipping textures
- Pixel formats
- PVRTC (Texture Compression)
- CCSpriteSheet
- Pre-render programatically generated textures
- Avoid using atomic accessors
- Read the best practices documentation
As always i hope you find these additions help- and useful.
If you followed my Xcode Project Tutorial or received it after signing up for my Newsletter you may have noticed that it would not compile if you added #import “box2d.h” to any of your classes. I investigated and thanks to your comments the problem was easy to fix. I wrote a Tutorial lesson detailing box2d integration issues and how to solve them.
In addition, Tim Soliday who blogs at FatFingerStudios.com went through the effort of creating a “real” Xcode Template from my Tutorial project. By “real” i mean an Xcode Template that will be added to Xcode’s “File -> New Project” list of applications so that you can choose to start with a “cocos2d Application from there. This has also been requested by readers. I added another Tutorial lesson which describes how to install Tim’s Xcode Template.
I will add Tim’s Xcode Template to the Newsletter welcome mail in a couple minutes so new Newsletter subscribers will receive it automatically! If you have already signed up for my Newsletter you’ll have it in your inbox shortly, you do not have to sign up again!
The new Projectfiles you’ll receive also contain the box2d fixes and include my free source code collection and a number of other changes. Most notably the addition of License files and folder structure that go along with it which help me and my customers to differentiate between my base source code that is only licensed to the customer vs. source code that is later fully owned by my customers. Feel free to disregard or delete these License files if you have no use for them.
This is worth pointing out: paulsondev (who unfortunately has no About page on his blog, hint hint ;)) posted a 90-minute (!) Tutorial about creating a scrolling Tilemap with TMX and cocos2d for iPhone! I haven’t watched it but anyone who is dedicated to make a 90 minute development video deserves attention. And as far as i can tell it’s pretty cool. Plus he uses the same desktop background as i do. 
I just published an update to the Marketing FAQ beginning with the lesson Your Privacy isn’t.
Those are mostly thoughts i had while i was cleaning out my Twitter list (who i am following) to make room for all the much more interesting people who are now following me because of this new cocos2d website. The Twitter celebrities had to go to make room for you!
It never actually crossed my mind that the Marketing FAQ would be so popular. For me it was a last minute addition to the cocos2d FAQs from a spontaneous thought. I’ll make sure to update Marketing and PR more frequently. I certainly learned a lot about it while i was busy with my colleagues getting an iPhone game company startup funded for the better part of 2009.
I’m sure you’ll want to know which iPhone games i’ve worked on. I’ll keep updating this post. Latest releases are on top.
Undisclosed Project
More info soon …
Black Hole
Created for Fun Armada, our iPhone game company startup. Published by ClickGamer.
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MIX-MAX iPad Edition
Contract work for Ravensburger Digital
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MIX-MAX
Contract work for Ravensburger Digital
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51 Japanese Characters
Pro Bono project for Peter Machat.
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Steffens Complete Gameography
You can view my complete Gameography which includes the PC and Handheld titles i’ve worked on at my professional job application website www.gametooldeveloper.com.
The Resources section contains FAQs and Tutorials for cocos2d for iPhone as well as Xcode, Objective-C, iPhone SDK and everything else iPhone game developers need to know.
Note: the resource pages are no longer updated but remain here for reference.
If you need more help please consider buying my Learn Cocos2D book. The other resources (Xcode project, free source code) have been migrated into the Kobold2D project.
