Hey there!

Few weeks ago me and a friend of mine decided to start developing games - mainly for mobile platforms (and firstly, for Android, because we don't have any Apple devices yet). At first we will create some simple games to get used to a workflow we need and after that we are planning to create some 2d sidescrollers and adventure games (later, 3d is an option).

I was searching through the topics here and the Internet as well and I have met with to viable options for us - Cocos2d-x and Libgdx. Of course there are more, but these were appealing to me.

My first point was to be able to create games for multiple platforms easily - I think this is a pro for both frameworks, but can you share some thoughts/experiences about these too?

Of course, one is built around C++ and the other is built around Java, none of the two is a problem (I am better at Java but I have enough experience in C++ to start developing). I also saw that there are many discussions/tutorials/videos/whatevers about both.

I am just curious which you would choose for your projects, which you did chose before and why?

Thanks!

Richard

I don't know anything about libgdx so can't really comment on it. On cocos2dx here are some thoughts:

• People who choose cocos2d-x tend to fit the following profile: they like and are experienced in C++ development, the primary target for the initial release of their game is iOS devices, and they want to leave the door open for an Android release in the future. I get the feeling that LibGDX is similar but replace C++ with Java and swap iOS and Android.
• cocos2d-x is not a good choice for someone's first foray into game development for a number of reasons but chiefly because the documentation is terrible; cocos2d-x documentation is essentially non-existent. You have to work with the cocos2d objective-C documentation and the cocos2d-x source code and post in the forums when you get really stuck. It is not that big a deal if you have done this sort of thing before but I could imagine someone who totally new to software development and 3rd party libraries and so forth just not being able to proceed beyond getting a tutorial to build.
• That said, cocos2d-x is not fundamentally flawed and will get the job done. It has a lot of warts (and some day I am going to do a blog post about the ones I have encountered) but I have encountered nothing that I couldn't fix or work-around.