Progress

More than a year ago, I started learning Objective-C from great lectures by Paul Hegarty. It was good introduction to iOS, as this series covered pretty much every aspect of the system, its structure, memory management etc. I stopped after maybe 10th lecture, because at this point I knew that learning whole new language would take much time. Also, I didn’t want to spent my holidays on doing so. Instead, I started thinking about things like touch controlls, level design, and generally about what factors are important while designing game on mobile devices. I remember especially one great talk on this subject with Karol Pikor as we were walking at the sea and brainstorming ideas.

After few months, while searching the web for other solutions how to develop games on iOS, I came across interesting game engine—Cocos2d-X. According to its developers it allows to write one codebase and make it work on various operating systems (mobile and desktop)—great! In addition, It’s C++ engine—even better! (as I already knew the language).

So when the opportunity arose in September (had to create a C++ project for the classes at the university) I jumped at the chance and wrote simple scrolling-based game on iPhone using Cocos2D-X. The idea was that player will be steering a ship by tilling device up and down, and shooting by tapping the screen. Shooting down certain number of asteroids will increase the level and speed of them, and on and on.

Of course, it’s not something of which I’m immensely proud. It was more a test of the engine and my getting back to business. I liked it so much that I decided to use Cocos2d-X in my new project that I’ll be starting very soon!