[Translation] BADLAND - game on cocos2d-iphone
BADLAND was launched on April 4, 2013 on the App Store for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Since then, more than 100,000 copies have been sold. Play this game ( iTunes link ) or watch the trailer before you continue reading - this will give you a more complete picture of the game I'm going to talk about. BADLAND was created by our indie company called Frogmind and consisting of two people. This is our first game on iOS and uses the latest version of cocos2d-iphone 2.1 along with many other open source libraries.
First of all, we wanted to create a game with the minimum possible number of people in the team. In our indie studio, we only have me, Johannes Vuorinen (programmer), and Juhana Myllys (artist). We signed a contract to create a soundtrack with a very talented guy Joonas Turner, because themselves are not strong in this area. It was clear to us that we want to focus on the development of the game itself, and not the implementation of engines and its own tools.
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That's why we decided to take a look at the engine with good support tools. BADLAND is a 2D game, so a 3D engine with 3D physics (eg, Unity3D) would be a bit redundant. In addition, I prefer engines with full access to the source code - I really know what is happening “under the hood”, and, perhaps, change what I don’t like. And, of course, most importantly, we wanted the engine to continue to develop an active community. Considering all these requirements, cocos2d has become an excellent choice.
When creating the game, not only cocos2d was used. Box2D as a physics engine is no less important. Box2D is so wonderful that we were able to implement everything we wanted in the game, without changing a single line of the source code. For example, the ability to install continuous collision detection of individual bodies was a really important feature for us, since there are some subtle obstacles and fast moving objects in the game.
To work with audio, we chose FMOD with FMOD Designer. I highly recommend FMOD. We were able to create a very dynamic sound without touching the source code of the game. Using FMOD is not free, but at the same time not very expensive for indie developers.
We used the fantastic tools of Andreas Loew: TexturePacker and PhysicsEditor . I highly recommend them both, and they easily work with cocos2d and Box2D. With TexturePacker, we were able to greatly optimize game performance and memory consumption, and with PhysicsEditor, it was easy to determine the physical boundaries of objects.
In addition to these, we used GlyphDesigner to quickly create a font and ParticleDesigner to create particle effects. They both work right out of the box with cocos2d. ParticleDesigner was not as perfect as the other tools mentioned, and I have many ideas for improving it, but it did the trick.
Finally, we used CocosBuilder to create 80% of the menu. It was easy and efficient. The only thing I really lacked was the inability to use ready-made spritesheets to reduce rendering calls when rendering CocosBuilder nodes.
When creating the game, a large number of additional open source libraries were also used, which do not play such a large role as those listed above. However, this fact should give a general idea that we used many ready-made engines, libraries and tools in the development of BADLAND. I would say that we were able to devote 95% of the time exclusively to the development of the game.
In general, I highly recommend using cocos2d for any 2D game. It is easy to learn, use and modify. Without the engine and the community, BADLAND would not have appeared so early. With cocos2d's, we have the opportunity to move the game to other platforms in the future. Thanks for the awesome engine and support!
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/badlandgame
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/badlandgame
Blog - http://www.badlandgame.com
iTunes link - https://itunes.apple.com/app/badland/id535176909
Original article - http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/badland-a-cocos2d-iphone-game/
Why cocos2d?
First of all, we wanted to create a game with the minimum possible number of people in the team. In our indie studio, we only have me, Johannes Vuorinen (programmer), and Juhana Myllys (artist). We signed a contract to create a soundtrack with a very talented guy Joonas Turner, because themselves are not strong in this area. It was clear to us that we want to focus on the development of the game itself, and not the implementation of engines and its own tools.
')
That's why we decided to take a look at the engine with good support tools. BADLAND is a 2D game, so a 3D engine with 3D physics (eg, Unity3D) would be a bit redundant. In addition, I prefer engines with full access to the source code - I really know what is happening “under the hood”, and, perhaps, change what I don’t like. And, of course, most importantly, we wanted the engine to continue to develop an active community. Considering all these requirements, cocos2d has become an excellent choice.
Other awesome engines, libraries and tools
When creating the game, not only cocos2d was used. Box2D as a physics engine is no less important. Box2D is so wonderful that we were able to implement everything we wanted in the game, without changing a single line of the source code. For example, the ability to install continuous collision detection of individual bodies was a really important feature for us, since there are some subtle obstacles and fast moving objects in the game.
To work with audio, we chose FMOD with FMOD Designer. I highly recommend FMOD. We were able to create a very dynamic sound without touching the source code of the game. Using FMOD is not free, but at the same time not very expensive for indie developers.
We used the fantastic tools of Andreas Loew: TexturePacker and PhysicsEditor . I highly recommend them both, and they easily work with cocos2d and Box2D. With TexturePacker, we were able to greatly optimize game performance and memory consumption, and with PhysicsEditor, it was easy to determine the physical boundaries of objects.
In addition to these, we used GlyphDesigner to quickly create a font and ParticleDesigner to create particle effects. They both work right out of the box with cocos2d. ParticleDesigner was not as perfect as the other tools mentioned, and I have many ideas for improving it, but it did the trick.
Finally, we used CocosBuilder to create 80% of the menu. It was easy and efficient. The only thing I really lacked was the inability to use ready-made spritesheets to reduce rendering calls when rendering CocosBuilder nodes.
When creating the game, a large number of additional open source libraries were also used, which do not play such a large role as those listed above. However, this fact should give a general idea that we used many ready-made engines, libraries and tools in the development of BADLAND. I would say that we were able to devote 95% of the time exclusively to the development of the game.
Conclusion
In general, I highly recommend using cocos2d for any 2D game. It is easy to learn, use and modify. Without the engine and the community, BADLAND would not have appeared so early. With cocos2d's, we have the opportunity to move the game to other platforms in the future. Thanks for the awesome engine and support!
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/badlandgame
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/badlandgame
Blog - http://www.badlandgame.com
iTunes link - https://itunes.apple.com/app/badland/id535176909
Original article - http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/badland-a-cocos2d-iphone-game/
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/181824/
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