Free iPhone game engine?

[Forerunnerz]

I need to know if there is a free iPhone game engine out. UNITY is out of my budget atm. I need an engine that works good for 2D games.

[lazypeon]

Cocos2D for iPhone

[stitchemwords]

check out cocoa-2d: http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/

[Forerunnerz]

Is the engine any good?

[lazypeon]

Yes, it's very good. I never programmed in Obj-C and I already have a great start on a game thanks to Cocos. I come from a mainly Java / Actionscript 3 background.

It has an active discussion board, and includes tons of examples. It has goodies like particle systems, transitions between scenes, etc... If you Google, you'll see it's highly recommended.

[Mew2468]

This is kind of a noob question, but...
How exactly does cocos2d work?

[Forerunnerz]

Thanks guys for the help. I downloaded Cocos. How do I run it? Does it only run on Mac. If so, it doesn't really matter because I'm getting a Mac in a couple of days but if it works on Windows I can begin practicing with this.

[lithiastudios]

Originally Posted by Forerunnerz

Thanks guys for the help. I downloaded Cocos. How do I run it? Does it only run on Mac. If so, it doesn't really matter because I'm getting a Mac in a couple of days but if it works on Windows I can begin practicing with this.

Once you get your Mac, run through this tutorial.. a great step by step guide:

http://monoclestudios.com/cocos2d_whitepaper.html

[lazypeon]

Yeah, you need to wait for your Mac. The tutorial lithiastudios posted is well known in the Cocos community and is the best place to start. It's constantly updated to be current (they already updated the tutorial to match the latest Cocos 0.7 build).

Once you get your head around the tutorial (mainly just project setup), look in the Cocos demo folder and compile some demos. If you need help, the Cocos forum (at the Google Code page) is very active and helpful.

[Forerunnerz]

Okay sweet. But what file opens Coco's? Just curious.