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Posted 01 March 2013 - 03:55 PM
I've decided that I want to focus on making games for Android and iOS. I know there are a bunch of game maker tools available. I started looking at GameMaker and it seems pretty nice. I did some googling and Stencyl comes up a lot for making games very easily without any code. Are these two programs the most widely used to create mobile games? Are there other tools that are more popular and better to create games with? Curious what the current trend is in the mobile world.
Thanks!
Posted 01 March 2013 - 04:32 PM
While there are tools out there that let you create games without code, it is probably the least-often used route.
Your best bet is to first learn how to program on the PC; either learn Java or learn C++. Then after you are comfortable with programming, make the transition over to Android or iOS, respectively.
Trying to learn a new language at the same time you are trying to learn how to develop on a device is extra hard. Much better to learn one thing at a time.
Posted 01 March 2013 - 04:44 PM
While there are tools out there that let you create games without code, it is probably the least-often used route.
Your best bet is to first learn how to program on the PC; either learn Java or learn C++. Then after you are comfortable with programming, make the transition over to Android or iOS, respectively.
Trying to learn a new language at the same time you are trying to learn how to develop on a device is extra hard. Much better to learn one thing at a time.
I do have programming background. I studied computer science in college and was a programmer for a few years out of school. I'm looking specifically at what tools people use to create games. I know Eclipse is the common IDE for Android and Xcode is used for iOS development. But I'm sure people who are making games for mobile devices are using game engines and not straight code with these IDEs.
Stencyl seems more like a click and drag app to make simple games (even though these tend to be the popular games) and GameMaker would be used for larger type games that need to get into the actual code to make things happen. I'm curious if there are other programs/tools that are common to make games for mobile devices. I know Java and C are common languages, but looking more at the tools since I've used both languages before.
Also to add, I'm looking specifically at 2D types games so not interested in Unity or UDK.
Edited by rancineb, 01 March 2013 - 04:45 PM.
Posted 01 March 2013 - 07:05 PM
In that case, Cocos2d-x will likely meet your needs.
I've never heard of this before. Is this a popular tool used among mobile game developers?
Cocos2d-x is a pretty common choice for mobile game development at this point mainly because if you want the following:
it currently is your only option.
If you don't want cross-platform, just want iOS, then you can use real cocos2d (formerly cocos2s-iphone) in Objective-C which is more mature. If you are willing to pay, you can use Marmalade which (I'm guessing) is a cleaner platform. If you don't care about C++ there are frameworks in which you write in a scripting language (lua, etc.), some of which are free (i think) but you won't have the kind of control you have in a native framework.
Otherwise, you can roll your own or you can use cocos2d-x.
I've been working with cocos2d-x for a few months now. My opinion of it is that it has a lot of warts but ultimately has solid bones. I haven't ran into any problems that I couldn't find a fix or at least a work-around for, no deal-breakers anyway, but it is also not the easiest large library/platform/framework type thing I have used. It is very much a work in progress; it's documentation is non-existent mostly. It's forums are active but the level of dialogue you get there is a mixed bag. Generally if you can't find sample code demonstrating how to do something you want to do, you have to read the cocos2d-iphone documentation and try to "port" the knowledge you gain back to cocos2d-x by reading its source code. I can imagine doing this sort of thing would be hard for beginners to programming, but it's not that big of a deal.
The main thing is understanding cocos2d-x's somewhat unintuitive memory manager and then you are all set.
Edited by jwezorek, 01 March 2013 - 07:10 PM.
Posted 01 March 2013 - 09:23 PM
I would recommend CoronaLab's product for most kinds of 2D mobile games. If you have programming skills, but this is your first mobile game, then it is perfect. You can come up to speed much more quickly with it then the others.
I'd only go with one of the others if you are doing something unusual enough that it requires more low-level control, in which case I would recommend Marmalade or possibly Moai, or Cocos2d. Each of those 3 has a steeper learning curve, but you can have finer grain control, it just depends on what you are doing. But for probably 95% of the games and applications I've seen for mobile, Corona would be a great choice.
Posted 02 March 2013 - 12:03 PM
No to forget there is MOAI, which is also cross-platform http://getmoai.com/ but they say, its for pro game developers, so if your just starting out you might find it a bit complex.
I have also used Cocos2d-x, but I dont like they way things are done in Cococs2d-x, but its free and cross-platform, so its a good option
