As much money as I've spent on education, books, and software. Now you tell me that for[font=calibri] $99[/font] I can be considered a [font=calibri]"Developer"[/font]? .... I have to wait 24 hrs. But hey...money well spent right?

LOL...If it were only that simple

So yesterday, I spent a lot of time scrolling through Netflix trying to find something of value to watch...ended up half watching Red Dawn. While wrestling the remote from my daughter off and on, surfing the web and pretending that I was listening to my wife in the background. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do this time around game dev wise. It's been years since I have done anything outside the realm of DirectX (still stuck on ver 9). Although, there was a brief stint with XNA of which died a fiery death due to the uncertainty of the Metro Architecture - spooked me because I hate to waste time.

Anyway, I'm the type of individual whose needs to be fully engaged with my interest beyond piqued if I am going to devote some time to anything new. After countless Google searches (basically catching up on two years lost) on the latest and greatest in the dev communities - looking at what's hot, what failed, and "[font=calibri]why would you waste your time with x technology"[/font]. I just happened to come across Cocos2d-x.

What's funny about Cocos2d for me is that back when I was a huge IPHONE fan boy, I wanted to dip my toe in the waters and see what developing for IOS was like. The biggest turnoff however was Objective-C. I bought a book on it, coded in it for a while and just did not like it. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for learning new technology and new languages. However, I just felt boxed in with OBJ-C. Considering the paradigm shift language wise (at least for me) I knew I was not about to become a full fledge card carrying member "Apple Development Only".

That said, It's amazing how if you go dormant for a couple of years how much things change ....like becoming an Android fan boy LOL.

Anyway...so you're saying I can stick with C++, and develop cross platform using Cocos2d-x? Ok, I'm listening...

This morning I went in the closet, dusted off my old Mac Mini that is currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. The hardware will not allow for anything above that build...10.7 is Lion. Why is this significant? Well, the latest version of XCode is 5 and of course my hardware is too old. Ok fine, I shoot out to the Apple site looking for the latest version of XCode that I could install. Sweet! 4.2 for "Snow Leopard" is available. So far so good.

Ah, the caveat....Xcode was/is free up to 3.x. Therefore, in order to gain access to the version I need. What? Huh? Yep, you guessed it. "[font=calibri]Gimmie [/font][font=calibri]$99 dollars[/font][font=calibri] and we will call you a developer and grant joo access sir![/font]" Sigh, I'm such a sucker....Oh well, guess I'm not a real developer yet (24 hr. wait). For now, I'm just some dude with a couple of computers and a credit card.

Anyway. Cocos2d-x seems interesting enough. However, I'm not going to commit to a game yet. I'm just going to have a little fun seeing what this API can do (or what I can do with it) and blog about my experiences for a while.


See you guys when I become a developer ......unless my card was declined