Hi All I am new to iPhone game development. Are there any third party SDKs out there - paid or free (preferably) - which can make my learning curve less steep. Thanks, Ali
Others are Proton-SDK, SIO2 and irrlicht. Or you could create your own engine like we did, absolutely free
Mmmm what? This is about the most ridiculous thing I've heard. Is your time free? Maybe you could make the engine for my next game? I won't pay you anything of course since it's free. Look up oportunity cost. The time you spent on your engine was time you didn't spend doing your game, thus dalaying its release, thus losing money. The only reason to build a custom engine (that you don't plan on licensing for other games) is when the available off the shelf solutions can't do what your game needs and rewriting them (if it's at all possible), would take more time and thus be more expensive than starting from scratch. Or if the royalties are so high that it's actually cheaper to build your own. Not the case for any of the examples above. I'm fairly certain your engine was more expensive to build than the price of any of those (probably all of them combined if it's any good).
If you are planning on making a 2D game I can't recommend cocos2d enough. Great support, great documentation. It's so easy to get a prototype up and running.
Perhaps your mind is tuned to hearing the ridiculous so often you fail to see that it can be a viable alternative in certain cases. We started out with zero budget and couldn't afford a ready-to-go kit. I happen to be the lead programmer on the team and I did all the hard work for free willingly at the time, and now I am the one earning my pay through the company. I wouldn't work for anybody else "for free", not anymore. My gamble paid off and I expect my free engine will evolve to cope with all our future requirements, given we had nothing to start with. But this is getting OT Collectively we have provided him with 7 solutions, and I have suggested an alternative custom approach which may or may not be to your liking. If khanali81 believes he is a capable programmer then by all means it is worth giving it a shot. But the final choice of engine/SDK depends entirely on the scale and complexity of the project, taking both time and budget into account. Best of luck with your projects, both of you
I wasn't saying that building your own engine was the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, in fact I specifically mentioned that if the existing off the shelf engines aren't a good fit for your project you pretty much have no other choice. Though I'd argue that answering someone asking for a third party framework to ease into iphone development to build their own engine is pretty up there. No, it was the fact that you said you built it for free. And this is very much on topic btw. Since I'm not a developer by trade, and a significant part of my work involves firm and asset valuation, I feel it's important to correct your misconception for the benefits of others in your situation. You are a programmer in one of the most highly sought out fields, yet you seem to think your hour is free? Just because you didn't shell out cash for the engine, doesn't mean it was free. You have to look at the alternative cost of your time. How much would you have made in the same time doing contract work? That is what the engine cost you (though not necessarily what it's worth, though that's a whole other can of worms and OT). And you have to take that into consideration for your accounting. Also you weren't working for "free", you did it for a share of the equity of your company. It only means you'll get paid later for it. I'm sorry if it looks like I'm attacking you or something, I'm not. But you can't spew such misinformed statements and expect not to be challenged.
Its fine, I understand If you believe the discussion is not OT then I am happy to challenge your challenging views. "Freedom" is a concept that varies from person to person and your interpretation of the word "free" likely differs greatly from my own personal views. Whatever I may have spent in developing our engine for "free", is for my own to value. The Time I spent perhaps cannot be considered "free" from all points of view, but it is more than likely that I have gained Time in return: there might have been unexpected problems had we gone with other SDKs which might have further delayed the project, or there still could have been unexpectedd problems in the future with our upcoming games had we used existing tech which I didn't have full control over. Its a theoretical discussion, but knowing my own strengths and circumstances I valued my own time and effort as "free" Ali said in his first post he is new to game development, so I accept that it was wrong of me to assume that creating a custom engine would be a viable solution for him. It depends entirely on his budget, in that case.
Instead of Cocos2d, I went with Corona SDK. They use the Lua programming language which is a lot simpler than dealing with Objective-C and XCode. It also compiles executables for iOS and Android. No doubt other platforms to come. The coolest thing is they integrated box2d which makes adding physics a snap. Not free, but a good deal in my opinion.
Add another one to the list, I've published my own engine for free you can find it on github here This is another option for people who want something different to the "big" cocos2D, my engine also have physics with Box2D
A lot of diferences, the whole game workflow is done through a statemanager instead of "scenes" or nodes or whatever thing. Let's say it's a more easy way to handle the game, I've been using this engine for years, first on PSP and then I've ported all the engine to iphone. Both cocos2d or my engine do the same thing, create games. The difference is how both engines handle the programming side. I've been using my engine to make all my games so the engine is really solid and optimised. I never used or want to use cocos2D Let me copy/paste what the readme says: Tools recommended/needed: Mappy for tilemaps Glyph for bitmap fonts from 71squared.com Particle designer for particle emmiters from 71squared.com Things included: -OpenglES for sprites, it's important to maximize the perfomance to use spritesheets/atlas (call them whatever) for everything. All the sprites are cached using a vertex array interleaved buffer, no VBO used -OpenAL for in game sounds -Avplayer for mp3 music using the accelerated iphonehardware to play them -Tilemaps with mappy, export your each layer as a .CSV file and use them in the engine -Bitmap fonts, using Hiero or Glyph export your bitmap font and the .fnt file and use it in the engine. It's better to put the font with the rest of the sprites together in a single 1024x1024 image to increase performance -Particle emmiter, using the 71squared class and particle designer to create your particles. This was never been so easy -Widgets, for your menus, buttons or any other sprite. -Animation class, use the xml included as a template and configure your game animations within the xml -Language selector, using the default iphone language load a xml file with the texts needed for your game, take a look at the xml files provided as a example. Simple name each file with the proper termination (euro zone only) ES.xml = spanish, DE.xml = deutsch, FR.xml = french,etc,etc. -Touchmanager -Statemanager, to control the game workflow. The engine comes with an example with a main menu and 2 scenes, one with physics and another with a tilemap with automatic scroll, like a topdown shooter. Learn how you can go from the menu to the game and return to the menu with the buttons included in the game. The top right button pauses the game, then with the game paused press the bottom right button to exit the game to the main menu.
