iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips » Category: iPhone Game Programming

Tutorial: Using Cocos2D iPhone and Box2D To Easily Create A Platform Game

John — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 20:35:32 +0000

Box2D is a great physics engine, but while there are some iOS code examples out there – there really aren’t too many tutorials around utilizing the iOS platform that also demonstrate the fundamental principles used by the engine.

I’ve found one tutorial that does a great job of explaining some of the more intermediate Box2D tutorial topics utilizing Cocos2D iPhone – specifically addressing Forces, Ray Casts and Sensors. I previously mentioned the first part of this tutorial which was created using LevelHelper and SpriteHelper (which are not required for this portion of the tutorial).

The tutorial demonstrates the creation of a Kid Icarus style platform game, and utilizes sensors and ray casts so the enemies can attack the game character with intelligence, and applies forces to keep the enemies floating in the air. The tutorial also demonstrates how to create a HUD overlay in Cocos2D for the game menu, and life tracker.

Here’s a video demonstrating the tutorial in action:

You can find the tutorial in 3 parts here – full source code is provided so you can jump right to the second part if desired:
Pt.1 How To Use SpriteHelper And LevelHelper
Pt.2 Intermediate Box2D Physics
Pt 3. How To Create A HUD Layer With Cocos2D

Overall, I think it’s a great tutorial on building a platformer. Personally I really never thought of using Box2D for some of the functionality it’s used for in the tutorial, but it definitely makes things easier once you have a basic understanding.

News: Open Source iOS Project Featuring Integrated Cocos2D, Cocos3D, Lua Scripting And More

John — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:44:16 +0000

Cocos2D is clearly a phenomenal success when it comes to open source iOS game engines. If you use Cocos2D and spent the time trying to integrate it with other projects such as iPhone Wax, and Cocos3D then you’ve probably wished that there was a way to automatically install all of these projects and actually have them work right off the bat.

Well, now there is a project that can do just that. Here’s a video demo of the project developed by Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development author Steffen Itterheim:

The project is Kobold2D. This is a project that I have been watching for months, and for some of you may seem like old news. The news is that tomorrow (August 30th, 2011) Kobold2D will finally be releasing their first preview version – no need to sign up for a forum hoping to be “chosen”.

Kobold2D integrates many open source projects – most notably Cocos2D, Cocos3D, iPhone Wax (for Lua scripting), and a number of extension to these libraries. Kobold2D also includes many game templates for different types of games such as Tilemap based games, shooter, and pinball games along with tools to make tedious tasks like keeping all these libraries up to date – automatic.

Looks like this will be a great time saver, and will be very interesting to see what other goodies are provided. In order to gain access to the preview version tomorrow you will need to sign up to the newsletter - for those privacy nuts out there wondering the official releases will not require sign up (whenever it is released).. just the preview version.

Tutorials: Cocos2D Game Tutorials Converted To Cross Platform C++ Cocos2D-X

John — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 20:47:10 +0000

In the past I’ve mentioned the Cocos2D-X open source project. For those unfamiliar with Cocos2D-X, Cocos2D-X is a cross-platfrom C++ implementation of the Cocos2D engine for creation of games that can run on iOS, Android, Windows, and others from a single code base.

One developer has been nice enough to convert several Cocos2D tutorials to Cocos2D-X so that you can take a look at the C++ code on yourself. They’ve included all the Android build files and Xcode project files so you should be able to get things running quickly on iOS and Android devices.

Here’s a list of the tutorials and the related Cocos2D-X source code on Github:
Simple iPhone Game - SimpleGameCocos2D-x
Simple iPhone Game 2 - SimpleGamePart2Cocos2D-x
Simple iPhone Game 3 - SimpleGamePart3Cocos2D-x
Tile Based Game - TileBasedGameCocos2D-x

On the Cocos2D-X project website they’ve also just posted a couple of videos detailing the process of setting up Cocos2D-X on the Mac for Android and iOS.

Should make for a good starting point for those looking to create cross-platform games or who would just prefer to use C++ over Objective-C.

News: Open Source 2D PixelWave Game Engine Officially Released

John — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:44:42 +0000

If you’ve visited this site for awhile then you may be aware that I keep a list of open source iOS game engines.

I received a tip about a game engine called PixelWave being officially released earlier this month. In the very recent past I’ve mentioned releases of the Moai SDK, and the Emo framework.

PixelWave uses Objective-C and the syntax should look very familiar to Flash developers – in fact PixelWave was designed based on the ActionScript 3 naming conventions. Very similar to the naming conventions used in the Sparrow Framework. It looks like PixelWave is already off to a good start with solid documentation, and an active community.

With so many open source 2D game frameworks now available for iOS developers it will be very interesting to see how PixelWave progresses in the future.

You can find the PixelWave game engine here:
http://www.pixelwave.org

If you have been looking for something different then you may want to give it a look.

Tutorial: Creating 2.5D iOS Games With Unity 3D

John — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:46:50 +0000

Previously I mentioned an excellent set of tutorials on creating 2D games with Unity 3D on iOS, and I was surprised with the large amount of interest from readers on that topic.

I’ve recently come across a tutorial on creating 2.5D games with Unity 3D. Unlike the tutorial mentioned above which uses sprites for the game objects other than the background this tutorial uses 3D objects all around (I know some of you are saying.. duhhh.. it’s 2.5D!).

At first I didn’t take a look because I didn’t know what this tutorial had to add as the Unity 3D website has their own 2.5D example. After a submission from the tutorial creator I decided to take a closer look and found that this tutorial does a great job of providing an excellent step-by-step guide on how to create a 2.5D game with Unity 3D on the iOS platform in far more depth than other examples I’ve seen.

What I really like about this tutorial is that it holds your hand, and provides many screenshots which are very helpful in using the visual tools that come with Unity 3D.

The tutorial demonstrates how to use the visual editor, basic scripting with C# (using MonoDevelop), particle basics, the basics of debugging with Unity 3D and more while building an example game.

The tutorial is from Marin Todorov, and you can find it in 2 parts here:
How To Make a 2.5D Game With Unity 3D Part 1
How To Make a 2.5D Game With Unity 3D Part 2

Should be a great help for anyone getting started with Unity 3D.

Open Source: Cross Platform iOS/Android 2D Game Framework Using The Squirrel Language

John — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 06:11:53 +0000

Not too long ago I mentioned the open source Moai SDK 2D game development kit that uses the Lua scripting language.

I’ve been watching another framework for some time that uses the Squirrel scripting language, and it was a bit rough around the edges. Today however, an update was just released, and in my testing appears to work extremely well on iOS devices (can’t say I tested it on Android yet).

The Squirrel language looks very interesting – similar looking syntax to Lua, but fully object oriented so it may be easier to swallow if you are used to object oriented programming languages.

The framework boasts quite a large feature support supporting Box2D physics, tilemap support, sprite animations, animation tweening the ability to run on both iOS and Android, and more.

The framework is known as emo and here’s a video demonstrating some of emo’s functionality:

You can find the emo framework homepage with full documentation here.

You can download emo from Google code here:
http://code.google.com/p/emo-framework/

You can find more information about the Squirrel language here.

With these great new open source frameworks the number of excuses for not writing a game on iOS are definitely running out.

Will be added to the Open Source iOS game engines list along with the Moai SDK as soon as possible.

Tutorial: Building Complete Games With SpriteHelper And LevelHelper

John — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:00:16 +0000

I’ve previously mentioned the excellent SpriteHelper and LevelHelper tools. These tools work with Cocos2d, Cocos2D X, and Corona SDK games and allow to quickly add graphics design levels, and physics to your games with drag-and-drop and parameter selection.

Together these tools are a very powerful combination, and save an incredible amount of time – while being pretty inexpensive. You can build your own games very quickly. I’ve always liked, but then run into issues whenever using drag’n'drop game dev tools. What I love about these tools is that you get the ease of development, but can still do whatever you want in code.

Recently Vladu Bogdan, creator of the tools recently added a couple of excellent tutorials on how to build complete games.

Marin Todorov has also created an easy to follow guide for beginners working with SpriteHelper and Level Helper working with Cocos2D.

You can find Vladu’s extensive complete game tutorials on building a run’n'gun game here:
Full Game Tutorial – Corona SDK
Full Game Tutorial – Cocos2d

You can find Marin’s tutorial here:
How To Quickly Create Physics Levels For Your Games

If you’ve been trying to get the most out of these tools these tutorials should definitely help you get started.

Open Source: 2D Isometric Action RPG Game Built With Cocos2D

John — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 06:28:45 +0000

Cocos2D has many features for those looking to develop isometric games. Handling of z-ordering, and tile maps are all built into the engine.

I’ve found an excellent open source game example known as KnightFight from Loz Archer of an isometric 2D tile based action rpg using Cocos2D. The game features a player controlled character that you move around the map, collisions between the player and map objects, simple computer controlled enemies, and basic player improvement through leveling.

You can find the source code on Github here:
https://github.com/lozarcher/KnightFight

A pretty simple game, but everything within it is very well done so if you are looking to create a tile based isometric RPG with Cocos2D this is a good example.

Tutorial: Augmented Reality UFO Shooter Game With Cocos2D

John — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 22:40:17 +0000

Augmented reality is one of those buzzwords that is driving sales in the app store. You could argue that in some cases adding a little reality into a game doesn’t really improve things – but clearly there is a segment of the market that disagrees.

I’ve posted about a basic augmented reality tutorial previously, and found an in-depth step by step tutorial on creating a simple UFO shooter game using the camera, gyroscope, and Cocos2D.

Here’s a short video demonstrating an early version of the tutorial in action:

The tutorial is from Nick Waynick and can be found here:
Intro To Augmented Reality On The iPhone

A pretty simple game, but augmented reality just makes it that much cooler.

. Tags: cocos2d augmented reality, augmented reality tutorial iphone, augmented reality games, augmented reality ufo game

News: Open Beta For Free 3D Objective-C Game Engine Nineveh

John — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 20:25:09 +0000

On this site I’ve mentioned many different iOS game engines on the open source iOS game engines list, and the commercial iOS game engines list. For the most part the free game engines are all 2D.

I recently found out about another game engine known as Nineveh from this forum posting that has entered into open beta. It looks great so far, and is well documented so if you want to play around with it you can just dive right in.

A few of the features offered are:

Support for .OBJ and Collada meshes
Reflections, Speculars, Bump mapping
Easily combine shader effects

You can find Neveh here:
Nineveh.gl

Be sure to check out their set of video tutorials if you want to learn how to use Nineveh quickly here:
Nineveh.gl/docs/tutorials/

While it’s still in open beta it looks great. The have stated that this is a free game engine - and not just freely available because it is in open beta.

. Tags: iphone 3d framework, objective-c game engine, objective-c game libraries, free 3d framework