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 »
From Dogfooding to Catfooding
Most developers have heard of the phrase “Eat your own dog food”. It refers to the habit of actually using what you’re creating.
A typical example would be a company building Yet-Another-Issue-Tracking-Tool™ while using said issue tracker to manage their Yet-Another-Issue-Tracking-Tool™ project. And you’ll surely have heard of a game engine that was initially only developed as a necessity to build a game, then polished and released to the public to great success, while the developer continued to create games with his own engine.
Dogfooding is considered a good practice, actually a best practice. You know that the tool you’re building works, and that it satisfies your needs.
But “your needs” is also the achilles heel of dogfooding, and it’s just a small step away from forever “perfecting” your product (known as “gold plating”). So sooner or later, you’ll have to do some catfooding, too. Meaning: to feed the user’s needs. Continue reading »
The latest episode of the Cocos2D Podcast has a special guest: Nate Weiss, developer of the commercial iPhone (RPG) Game Kit.
Nate is one of the most enthusiastic game developers I know, his true love being RPG games. When not making games he loves to help others learn game development and makes a living off of that.
And he does all that from the confines of his floating apartment: he lives on a boat!
To top all that the Cocos2D Podcast now has an intro music provided by Marco Neumann aka @marcotronic. Thanks Marco, rock on!
Cocos2D Podcast: Nathanael Weiss (iPhone Game Kit Developer)
PS: I actually forgot to publish this post after I was done writing it. It was sitting here as draft for a week. I’m sorry for the delay!
About
Steffen in bullet points:
- is: a professional game developer since 1999
- wrote: Learn Cocos2D Game Development
- writes: bi-weekly, extensive iDevBlogADay articles
- blogs: about Cocos2D and related matters
- hosts: Cocos2D Central Community
- sells: Line-Drawing Starterkit for Cocos2D and more
- created: Kobold2D, an improved Cocos2D
- is not: an affiliate / representative of Cocos2D
The long story, shortened a bit …
At the beginning, I was merely a Cocos2D developer just starting out with this fine game engine. I started working with Cocos2D in May 2009. Despite many years of game development experience, I struggled many times over - there was so much to learn and specifically for Cocos2D there wasn’t much documentation to go on.
Learn & Master Cocos2D Blog
A year later, I was well aware that besides growing in popularity, the basic issues of getting started with Cocos2D essentially stayed the same. Consequently, beginner’s tutorials got rampant visits from aspiring Cocos2D game developers. So I decided to start this Learn & Master Cocos2D website and blog to help you get started and answer pressing questions while trying to earn a living selling source code products like the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit.
Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development Book
Within hours of going live with this website in early May 2010, I was contacted by Jack Nutting, author of Learn Cocoa on the Mac. He got me in contact with Apress and a short but intense proposal period for a Cocos2D book followed. Then I blogged about the book’s progress every week. What followed were five months of writing and learning more about Cocos2D and writing books than I ever imagined. The book was finally completed and released in December 2010: Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development: The Leading Framework for Building 2D Graphical and Interactive Applications.
Cocos2D Central
During the time I wrote the book, this website had to take a backseat, so I did not grow the tutorials and other content as I had initially planned. With the book finished, I knew I was going to do lots of Q&A and it should be done publicly, so that everyone can benefit from it. The result is the Cocos2D Central forum and community website.
Kobold2D: Cocos2D on Steroids
Another result from my extensive work with Cocos2D is Kobold2D. It is designed to make Cocos2D developers more productive and making it easier to get started. I use it for all of my own work.
Kobold2D originated from the idea to build a consistent framework for all of my Cocos2D projects, instead of inadvertently dispersing the reusable code over multiple projects. If you’re serious with Cocos2D development or just getting started you should really check out Kobold2D.
My Leitmotif
I have always been a nutcracker and firefighter in my previous game industry jobs. I have always been sitting between chairs, as I did not fit a proper, established job description. I’m a jack of many trades, master of some. I program, I design, I write, I market, I sell, I help, I teach, I moderate, I network and I do what I think needs to be done. But most of all, I’ve always been helping other developers - that was always present in every job I did, and when I worked with the right people, those were the best times I ever had. Give me a problem and (most of the time) I’ll want to solve it. I’m happy when I can help others grow and excel. That’s my leitmotif, that’s what I’m doing now for Cocos2D developers.
