Why Apple Created Sprite Kit And What It Means For Cocos2D
Looking for a Sprite Kit Game Engine? Check out Kobold Kit!
In case you missed the news: Sprite Kit is Apple’s 2D rendering engine for games, announced with iOS 7 at WWDC 2013 by merely mentioning it among other new APIs. A small step for Apple, a giant leap for gamedeveloperkind. This changes everything!
Many compare Sprite Kit with cocos2d-iphone. Don’t ask me why, they just do. 😉
If you’re a registered Apple developer you can check out the Sprite Kit Programming Guide and the SpriteKit.framework reference yourself.
Sprite Kit is under NDA, like the rest of iOS 7, so I won’t spell out any details here. I posted my list of strengths and weaknesses of Sprite Kit on the developer forum, where we can freely discuss such details.
Here let me just try to answer the questions: why did Apple create Sprite Kit, and why now?
The Biggie: Apple acknowledges games!
Apple finally understands the significance of games for their platforms! Sprite Kit is acknowledgement of that fact. Rejoice!
Especially if you consider the rumored Apple TV set: imagine a television set that runs iOS with an App Store to download and buy YOUR games. Interestingly, iOS 7 also adds an API for 3rd party game controllers, think of joypads, like those you get with an Xbox or Playstation. Continue reading »
Comparison of Lua Scripting with Corona SDK, Wax and Kobold2D
This Kobold2D FAQ article explains the difference between Corona SDK and iPhone Wax library, and evaluates the existing and future options for Lua scripting in Kobold2D.
