The Commercial iPhone Game Engine Comparison (3D and 2D)
After making my open source iphone game engine comparison post,, I’ve noticed quite a few searches for a comparison of commercial iPhone game engines, so I’ve decided to create this comparison.
Please note that this is only a feature comparison, as while I have tested out the editors of these engines (where available for free) I have tried all of these engines and have been maintaining this site for the last two years so I can provide a lot of information on the topics. I’ve listed them separately in 3D and 2D placing the free ones first.
iPhone Game Programming: CoreAnimation vs. OpenGL ES
I saw an interesting question being asked by an aspiring iPhone game developer, "Should I use CoreAnimation or OpenGL ES?".
Simple answer:
Core Animation is fine for games where performance is not critical, and for new programmers will likely be easy to use, OpenGL is needed for anything else.
Long Answer:
Core Animation utilizes OpenGL ES, it is high level, and in my testing works fine in situations where performance is critical.
8 Sensational iPhone Game Engines (2D and 3D)
After finishing up a contract, I decided to start work on my first graphical iPhone game title. Originally I had set out to create to an iPhone game, and tested out several of the engines available, but put things on hold to work on some small contracted apps. Now I’ve decided to get back to that, and took another look at the iPhone game engines available, so here they are with a small writeup about each engine.
16 Killer iPhone OpenGL ES Resources
Here’s my updated list of OpenGL ES resources, this list includes tutorials, engines, blogs, and books. I have updated it to include a couple of OpenGL ES 2.0 resources, and many other OpenGL ES 1.x resources that others have shared with me.
I have created a new version of this list at: 18 OpenGL ES Resources That You Must Know!
Math Resources
OpenGL GluPerspective Function In iPhone OpenGL ES
The second issue that I ran into when converting OpenGL code to iPhone OpenGL ES code was that the Glu libraries are missing and are widely used in OpenGL code. Fortunately as I said in an earlier post there is a GluES project in which many of the Glu functions have been converted to run in OpenGL ES. Now if you look in my code for Nehe Tutorial #2 on the iPhone I have added the functions: