SpriteBuilder v1.0 and cocos2d-iphone v3.0 now available

On January 21, 2014, in Announcements, cocos2d, by Steffen Itterheim

Cocos2d-iphone is rebooting … please stand by.

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Click any link to develop!

Today marks a new beginning: SpriteBuilder v1.0 is now available on the Mac App Store for free and it goes together with the release of cocos2d-iphone v3.0.

SpriteBuilder is the successor of the design tool formerly known as CocosBuilder. It is specifically designed to work with cocos2d-iphone v3. SpriteBuilder now has its own website with a dedicated SpriteBuilder forum that you should use for any questions about and suggestions for SpriteBuilder.

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Measuring Game Engine Popularity

On July 25, 2013, in idevblogaday, by Steffen Itterheim

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:

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:

Screen Shot 2013-07-25 at 14.48.31

Okay, let’s try that again with cocos2d-iphone removed so the other variants can be compared in relation to each other:

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Cocos2D Developer Survey Results

On November 16, 2012, in idevblogaday, by Steffen Itterheim

For the past two weeks I’ve been running a Cocos2D Developer Survey. As of today, 236 developers started the survey and 189 finished it completely. That’s 80% despite the many questions they had to answer.

Here are the results with my observations. I started the survey also to see if I was on track with KoboldTouch, and whether certain assumptions hold true. Specifically I had a hunch that cross-platform development is only perceived to have great value or appeal. Let’s see if I was right.

Click on each image for full resolution.

Who are you?

I was very curious how many cocos2d developers consider themselves to be hobbyists and indies compared to professionals, who either work for a mobile developer or are taking on freelance jobs as one.

Almost half of those who answered the survey are hobbyists. Nearly 30% consider themselves indies who make a living making mobile games. This is great!

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The Complete (?) List Of Cocos2D Tools

On June 24, 2011, in book, cocos2d, tools, by Steffen Itterheim

For the second edition of the Learn Cocos2D book I compiled an alphabetically sorted list of tools that developers can use for cocos2d projects. Please let me know if there’s a tool missing from this list or if there’s one that won’t work anymore and hasn’t been updated in months.

The following tools can be used for development with cocos2d:

Bitmap Font Tools

BMFont (Windows)
Fonteditor
Glyph Designer
bmGlyph
Hiero
LabelAtlasCreator

Particle Editing Tools

ParticleCreator
Particle Designer

Physics Editing Tools

Mekanimo
PhysicsBench
PhysicsEditor
VertexHelper

Scene Editing Tools

CocosBuilder
Cocoshop
LevelHelper

Texture Atlas Tools

DarkFunction Editor
SpriteHelper
TexturePacker
Zwoptex

Tilemap Editing Tools

iTileMaps
Tiled Map Editor