KoboldTouch - 2D Game Development

On September 14, 2012, in , by Steffen Itterheim

KoboldTouch brings you the best 2D game development experience for Apple’s platforms!

KoboldTouch is the only Objective-C, ARC-enabled 2D game engine built on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. Write ambitious games with greater ease!

KoboldTouch is also a continuously evolving, customer driven game development framework for iOS & Mac OS X, designed by game industry veterans to incorporate game development best practices and decades of experience.

Learn more about KoboldTouch features and what’s in it for you:

Open the “About KoboldTouch” Page for Details

Not quite ready for KoboldTouch yet?

Fill out the KoboldTouch Survey. Let us know what you think of KT and how to make it better.

Get KoboldTouch!

KoboldTouch is available as a subscription program that entitles you to updates and support.

Choose Your Support & Updates Plan

Recurring billing may be cancelled at any time. The yearly plan is non-recurring.

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You will be charged $14.95 every month.

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$119.95

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60-Day Money Back Guarantee

If you’re not satisfied you can request a refund within 60-days from the date of purchase, directly via Clickbank.

Line-Drawing Game Starterkit finally available for sale!

On July 19, 2010, in Announcements, Marketing, by Steffen Itterheim

I’m pleased to announce that the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit is finally available for sale! It’s a source code project for anyone interested in developing a line-drawing game. The gameplay is modelled after the famous Flight Control game. The Starterkit works with the latest cocos2d v0.99.4 version and will at the very least receive compatibility upgrades for future cocos2d versions.

Hop on over to the product page to check out the feature list, the API documentation and a source code sample. You can also download the Starterkit App for iPhone from iTunes. The iPad Edition is still in approval.

Note: for the reminder of July 2010 you can get the Starterkit at an introductory price for only $179!

Positioning of the Starterkit

I’m sorry that you’ve had to wait one and a half months compared to the initially planned release date of June 1st. I double and triple checked every decision I made and you can see some of the results on the Starterkit product page.

I’ve also decided to increase the regular price from the initially intended $199 to $299 effective from August 1st, 2010. One of the reasons being that I initially planned to have multiple licenses including Indie and Commercial ones. I thought long and hard about positioning the Starterkit and eventually decided to sell only Site Licenses. For the individual developer it costs a bit more but for small and commercial teams it’s great news, and small teams and established, dedicated developers is who I am targeting. Those who really appreciate the value of commercial source code saving days and weeks of research and development, and all the trouble, sweat and pain associated with it. And I’m here to help if you have any questions regarding the Starterkit’s source code.

I don’t have plans to make another Starterkit and in all likelihood it will remain the only commercial cocos2d-related product for the remainder of this year.

Book Chapter about Line-Drawing Games

For those who are disappointed about the new price, either grab the Starterkit before August 1st or wait until December for the Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development book I’m writing. It will contain a chapter covering some of the basic aspects of a line-drawing game but without the finer details and complex interactions conveyed in the Starterkit. It’ll be Chapter 12 so in about 8 weeks (Mid-September) I’ll mention it in my weekly book chapter posts.

Closed Sales Period, Summary of

And here’s for transparency: exactly 10 days ago I informed the 668 subscribers of my Newsletter of the closed sales period. The password-protected Starterkit product page received just over 200 unique visitors. During the last 10 days I made 9 sales amounting to about $1,530 with Plimus’ 5% fee already deducted but obviously before tax. All sales were made within the first 4 days after I sent the Newsletter and for the last 6 days sales were absolutely zero. Although I’ve been in contact with several interested parties who didn’t want to or simply couldn’t buy it right now for various reasons. If you’re one of them: you’ll get it for $179 no matter when you make the purchase, just contact me beforehand.

Right now I’m curious to see how sales will be now that the Starterkit is publicly available.

Starterkit Promotion

I’d appreciate if you would tweet and re-tweet this post and mention the Starterkit to all fellow cocos2d-sians! If you would even go so far as writing a serious and honest review on your blog, please get in touch with me.

Just don’t test the waters by mentioning the Starterkit in the cocos2d community forum.

Stance Lance

I wish Ricardo had taken the time to be considerate and then talked to me instead of running off making an assumptive, excessive, and for the most part irrelevant (off-topic) stance post which only served to cause a big commotion among his community while allowing his forum rule “Treat people with respect.” to become a farce.

In Conclusion

In hindsight I’m glad that the whole thing got me thinking in so many new directions. Most importantly it got me in contact with a lot of developers who consciously don’t post on the cocos2d forum. To get those encouraging words and positive feedback and gaining interesting insights from other developer’s perspectives - especially those who tag along silently - really helped me understand the cocos2d development community better. Thank you, you know who you are!

The whole shebang also served as a great motivational factor to pour my everything into the cocos2d book, which came at just the right time to let off steam in just the right way. I’m writing it to be the cocos2d documentation it deserves and the one I always wished it had. I can’t even begin to describe how satisfying it feels to write this book. So much in fact that it hurts to stop writing every time I reach the 27 pages each chapter is expected to have.

Tagged with: api documentation • cocos2d • cocos2d-iphone • commercial source • Competition • developer • developers • development • documentation • feature • feature list • game • introductory price • ipad • Kit • learn • license • line-drawing • product • product description • release • release date • sale • sample • source code • starterkit

cocos2d Book, Chapter 4: First Simple Game

On July 17, 2010, in Announcements, book, cocos2d, by Steffen Itterheim

Chapter 4 - First Simple Game

After Chapter 3 covered the fundamentals of the cocos2d game engine, this chapter will put to use what you’ve learned. The simple game is all about droping enemies that you have to avoid via accelerometer controls. Sort of like an inverse Doodle Jump. But it’s not just about the gameplay itself, I want the game to be reasonably complete with a main menu, scene transitions, game over and of course audio.

The chapter will be submitted on Friday, July 23rd.

Do you have any suggestions for the game?

What do you think should be in a first cocos2d game? Let me know!

Summary of working on Chapter 3 - Essentials

When I started the chapter I wasn’t really sure about its focus and progress was a little slow. Eventually it clicked and I found myself ending up having written more pages than needed and still having a great number of things left untold. The key was looking at the cocos2d API reference documentation and remembering what it was like when I was a beginner. Sure, every class, method and property is there but for a beginning cocos2d developer the API reference is just a huge list of names. In other words, if your experience was or is anything like mine was, it’s frustrating to work with the API reference.

I ended up writing about the cocos2d engine design and its scene graph first, the remaining 80% of the chapter explain in detail with lots of code samples how to use those darn CCNode classes. All the important ones are covered: CCNode, CCScene, CCLayer, CCSprite, CCLabel, CCMenu, CCMenuItem* as well as the Director, Transitions and Actions. Besides the code samples and how-to I’ve added numerous caveats, common mistakes, best practices and other nodes which are so very much needed to make any documentation complete.

For example, how Layers are best used for grouping other nodes together and of course how to enable touch and accelerometer input by adding the required functions which aren’t mentioned in the API reference since they are part of the iPhone SDK API. There’s also some weird recommendation floating around not to use too many Layers because they’re slow. I can’t find the source but what I did find was that this is only true if the Layers enable touch or accelerometer input, because that’s what costs a lot of performance. So what you don’t want to have is several layers accepting input, otherwise use as many Layers as you need - which shouldn’t be many anyway. And if you do need multiple Layers accepting input, why not just use one master Layer (possibly using a Targeted Touch handler) which forwards the input events appropriately to the other Layers?

Tagged with: accelerometer • actions • best practices • caveats • CCLabel • CCLayer • CCMenu • CCMenuItem • CCNode • CCScene • CCSprite • chapter 3 • cocos2d • code samples • design • Director • documentation • Essentials • game engine • how-to • Layers • sample • scene • scene graph • scene transitions • simple game • source • transition • Transitions

cocos2d Book, Chapter 2: Getting Started

On July 2, 2010, in Announcements, book, cocos2d, by Steffen Itterheim

Chapter 2 - Getting Started

This chapter starts with the usual prerequisites. Download and install iPhone SDK and cocos2d. Installing cocos2d Templates. Creating the first project from a cocos2d project template.

From what I already wrote I estimate that will be about one third of the chapter. I think what would be most interesting in this chapter is to talk about general code structure of cocos2d projects. The basic elements like Scenes, Layers and Nodes. How to transition from one screen to another, to see that we’re actually doing something cool with little effort. For that I think the scheduled selectors should also be introduced to time transitions, and one screen might be a Layer which is waiting for touch input to advance to the next screen.

It might also be a good place to discuss cocos2d memory management, like static autorelease initializers, and making sure dealloc gets called when you switch scenes - otherwise you’re obviously having a memory leak.

The goal is to get the reader into a position where he feels comfortable laying out a screen structure in cocos2d. He knows how to initialize objects and how to add and remove them from the scene. The foundation of working with cocos2d if you so will.

What do you think should be in Chapter 2?

Let me know if you think I’m missing anything important. If you don’t have any suggestions then just think about what you would expect from the chapter by reading this description, that might give you some thoughts.

Also I would welcome any tips and the common pitfalls first-time cocos2d developers might trap themselves into. Expert tips are also welcome, those little nasty things or habits which could bite you later on if you don’t consider them from the beginning.

I’m looking forward to your feedback! The earlier the better. Chapter 2 will be submitted next Friday, July 9th.

What’s planned for the Chapter after this one

Just to put Chapter 2 in context, for Chapter 3 I’m planning to talk about essential cocos2d classes and processes. Sprites, Labels, Menus, Actions, etc. It’ll show you how to work with them using small code snippets. The chapter will probably have a “reference” character with various code samples, so that experienced users feel comfortable skipping ahead while beginners still find it easy and encouraging to pick up the details.

Tagged with: actions • apress • autorelease • book • cocos2d • code • code structure • dealloc • expert • expert tips • feedback • iphone sdk • memory leak • memory management • Menus • pitfalls • Project • project template • sample • SDK • tip • Tips • touch input • transition • user

Starterkit: Line-Drawing

On May 27, 2010, in , by Steffen Itterheim

Line-Drawing Game Starterkit

Site License! Unlimited Apps!

Royalty Free! No Attribution!

60 day money-back guarantee!

Made with the popular cocos2d-iphone game engine.

Compatible with cocos2d-iphone v1.1 and v2.0, Xcode 4.6 and iOS 6.

Includes ARC enabled versions of the starterkit!

Sale - only $49 !

All Starterkit project artwork provided by Arezou Ipakchi Design. Promotional images created by Justin from CartoonSmart.

What it is:

Get a head-start for your Line-Drawing game and save days if not weeks of your time! You’ll get gameplay code modelled after the extremely popular Flight Control game. You’ll learn how to draw lines, detect touches on objects, have objects follow a path - and much, much more! Written by a professional game developer and game industry veteran (me) the source code is annotated with lots of comments explaining my rationale and written with readability in mind.

Contains separate iPhone & iPad targets!

The Starterkit includes targets for iPhone and iPad using the same code if you don’t want to create a Universal app, for example to reduce your app’s size or to be able to charge more for the iPad version. If the iPad Target is selected hi-res iPad images will be used. Image selection is done automatically by loading those images whose filenames have the “-ipad” suffix, the same suffix cocos2d uses.

What others are saying:

“Code is quite clearly written and decently documented […] definitely a fine investment.”
From: Commercial cocos2d Code review from Alex Curylo.

“It was an awesome moment when I found the source for a line draw game of this caliber.”
-Franklin Lyons, SpinFall

“Especially the path and movement system is saving me lots of headaches.”
-Martin Hoffmann

Games made with this Starterkit:

Launch Control

Ferries HD

Feature List:

cleanly seperated and well-structured GameScene code design with a minimum of dependencies
easy to add new objects and extend object parameters
touch object & draw a path for it (whether it’s already following a path or not)
path drawing ends when path is drawn over appropriate target location (eg airstrip for airplanes, respecting angle of approach)
path drawing ends when arbitrary point limit is exceeded (to avoid slowdowns)
path is drawn when dragged with thick transparent line style like Harbor Master, without glitches
path is split into equal length pieces no matter how quickly user moves finger
objects spawn outside screen, locations can be re-defined and extended
objects display incoming warning marker at screen border
objects display collision warning when any two of them are getting too close
objects follow path to end - then fade out and increase score or continue moving
objects always rotate in movement direction
objects bounce back at screen borders
motivational Labels for successful landings, precached
Score and HighScore Labels
HighScore saved to disk between play sessions
supports both Landscape orientations with autorotation
loads correct resource files depending on Target (iPhone or iPad)
proper Pause handling for incoming calls, SMS
many generally useful Math Helper functions included
lots of comments explaining rationale and giving tips for improvement
assertive coding style to help catch coding errors early on
offline and online documentation
you can choose between using cocos2d-iphone v1.1 and v2.0
you can choose between using ARC or classic manual reference counting
compatible with iOS 5.0 and newer, including iOS 6
compatible with Xcode 4.6 (the most recent versions also work)
easy setup: just unzip, open Xcode project, select build scheme, build and run

Questions? Need Help?

Just send me an email.

Legal Disclaimer

Cocos2D is a registered trademark of Ricardo Quesada. Steffen Itterheim, the Learn & Master Cocos2D website and the Line-Drawing Game Starterkit are neither affiliated with nor endorsed by Zynga or Ricardo Quesada.

Try Before Buy!

Demo App for iPhone
Demo App for iPad

Browse the API Documentation

View a Code Sample