Mobile dev, choice of framework/engine

🎤 General Discussion iOS
1

Ok, I have done some work commercially for my company in the mobile area, plain old and boring business apps using XCode and Android Studio seperately and one using Xamarin.

Now for myself I want to try my hand at creating a small mobile game (2d only). A few year ago I downloaded and installed SpriteBuilder on my Mac Mini but never got round to using it.

Now I want to reinstall it but seems they have changed things around and there seems to be an issue with the download (Tells me that Spritebuilder is not available in the UK store)

But I had a question and wanted suggestions. As a note I will be developing on a Mac.

I am torn between using Spritebuilder, SpriteKit or Cocos2d-ObjC.

I’d prefer a game engine that will allow cross compile for iOS and Android if possible although I want to stress my main interest is iOS. SpriteBuilder seems to allow this but at a small fee (Am I right?).

Cocos2d-x seems decent requires you use either C++, Lua or Javascript.

SpriteKit vs SpriteKit vs Cocos2d-ObjC…or something else?

Any suggestions as to what game engine/framework to use?

Thanks (Confused game dev wanna-be-noob)

A.K.A. John

2

Hi John,
I suggest you go for SpriteKit in SWIFT 2.2 then. I’ve used it for a remake of some old game and it seems fairly simple. It has all the build-in physics as well for connections and fields etc. I don’t know the others you mention - though cocoa is old and tiresome to use due to funny syntax. That’s my 2 cents. SWIFT is more like c# if you know that.

3

Thanks MM, I have made that choice.

The only issue I have with Spritekit is that it doesnt have the type of editor like SpriteBuilder had allowing you to visually edit and create levels.

Guess we cant have our cake and eat it…