Kobold2D v1.0.4 is available from the Kobold2D Download page!
I’m terribly sorry for the hiccup with v1.0.3. There was an absolute path causing build failures for others, which of course worked on my systems so I didn’t catch it. I retracted v1.0.3 shortly after publishing it. The fixed version is now v1.0.4. If you happen to have downloaded v1.0.3 I recommend to upgrade to v1.0.4 right away.
The most important improvements in this version are Xcode 4.3 compatibility and working around a “file not found ../libkobold2d-ios.a” issue caused by the Xcode 4 Build Location setting “Locations Specified by Targets” (in Xcode 4.3 this setting is now appropriately named “Legacy”).
The Release Notes lists all the changes. Continue reading »
Kobold2D v1.0.2 is now available from the Kobold2D Download page!
Read the Release Notes for detailed list of changes. Most of them are minor as this is a maintenance release, but there’s a bug fix in KKInput’s gesturePanRecognizer that fixes the incorrect translation and velocity values. If you’re using the pan gesture I recommend to upgrade.
I’ve also taken the time to attempt to clarify what Kobold2D is about with this … imagram:
I’ve been reading and enjoying blah blah blah (not to be confused with blah blah blah) which prompted me to try a more visual approach. I highly recommend reading Dan Roam’s book! I’m sure you can’t draw either, but you should do it anyway. Or try Xmind.
Hmmm … have you ever noticed how many great things start or end with an x?
This quick comparison sheet gives you all the info to decide whether to use Cocos2D 1.x or Cocos2D 2.x. Contrary to most programs, a higher version number doesn’t infer “better” or “more”. There are pros and cons for both versions.
At the time of this writing the decision really only boils down to whether you want to use shaders and whether you must be able to deploy your app to 1st & 2nd generation devices. See for yourself, it’s that simple:
Cocos2D v1.x(+) compatible with all iOS devices |
Cocos2D v2.x(+) OpenGL ES 2.0 shader programs |
All other differences to this day are minor, and most new features and bugfixes have been migrated back and forth between versions. For beginners I strongly recommend using v1.x as there’s a lot more documentation available for this version. Those who have no interest in writing shader programs can also safely use the v1.x branch without missing out.
Whaaaaaat?
You heard right: if you want to forget about using retain, release and autorelease in your code, then the newly introduced automatic reference counting (ARC) mechanism (aka “automatic memory management”) is the way to go. And guess what?
Kobold2D Preview 6 fully supports ARC out of the box!
You may have heard that Cocos2D is incompatible with ARC at this time, and you’re right. However, the Cocos2D version in Kobold2D Preview 6 released just now has been improved to work with ARC. This post explains the most important changes to make Cocos2D compatible with ARC. All 15 Kobold2D example projects compile with and without ARC, just like the other libraries Kobold2D makes use of!
Scheduled for release on November 7th, 2011. Continue reading »
A couple months ago I wrote a tutorial explaining how to upgrade Cocos2D in an existing project.
I was able to cut the description down to only five concrete steps, but there’s still a lot of text to follow and caveats to consider. I designed Kobold2D exactly to make it easy to solve the issue of upgrading projects to newer versions of the game engine.
