http://www.packtpub.com/cocos2d-x-by-example/book

Where to start... "Cocos2d-x by Example Beginners Guide" is a good great book! Turns out one of my Appsomniacs partners has bought this book and also enjoyed its knowledge (votes+=2). Even have cut my teeth and shipped on iOS, Android and Windows 8. The Windows 8 was such a hack job I could never get it cleaned up to do a push request (I think, I should just try, at least put it in my branch. Please nag at me if I don't... It may be a bridge too many not subtle changes. Anyway, I digress, the rest of this about this great book that might help a lot of people on their Cocos2d-x journeys.

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1) The first thing that popped out at me when I cracked the spine on this book was the large quantity of and the technical diversity of the contributors. I was impressed with their bio/resumes and the book certainly was better for it.

2) Hang on tight. The gas pedal is binary. The book gets you up and running rather quickly. Almost too quick in some respects, but later chapters make up for that hand holding fast start in ten fold. I was worried at first a lot of bits were glossed over. Do not worry about this stuff. Great details will be given in droves, and when not a good entry point to references often sufficed.

3) I actually appreciated the section (within chapter 2) that was a primer on as well as described why the C++ was arranged the way it was (e.g., what conventions were from the Objective C world and reminders of things you need to remember to do when in C++ (i.e., proper memory management because ARC is not available.)) My favorite quote so far "... relax, and let the framework work for you."

4) The learn by example part struck me as well done. It could always cover more. I was wanton for more after 6 games. Maybe combining this and the ideas found in the iPhone Cookbook you could get even more mileage. Frankly, after you tackle this books examples. I did one a weekend (~4 hours in 1-2 sessions usually) you will be pretty well versed. The games are varied enough and the topics within cover a lot of ground. I will always want more!

5) Chapter 10 is gold for anyone coming from iOS and wanting to break into Android and really use the greatness of what Cocos2d-x brings to the table (IMO anyway.) You are presented a nice 'uncluttered' step by step walk through (albeit the compile sections was 20 steps, but they were important 'no fluff' steps! I am pleased they linked their sources on this one too. Our team put this stuff together by piecing together Android NDK posts and trial and error last year (of course we never thought to share because we never thought we did it right to begin with... it compiled... and ran, so we shipped it anyway...) I think the chapter here would have saved us much time and pain. Luckily you now have this resource to leverage. My only wish was that a little more time was spent on the tricks you have to go through to get as clean as code as possible (not special casing every piece of logic with pre-compiler directives, etc. for each platform.) Maybe a little treatise on design patterns would have been helpful here too. But I guess all of that is really beyond the scope of the book (i.e., a lifetime could be spent learning how to write well designed cross platform C++ code. If anyone knows of a good book let me know!

6) I want to mention the index. It was a basic run of the mill index. Don't get me wrong it was a good and proper index. But I can not help but note this book chapters were laid out similarly to the iPhone book "Creating Games with Cocos2d for iPhone 2", which had a brilliant index (I bet someone hated it... those darn trolls convinced them not to do it this way!) In the iPhone book most chapters covered an entire game by example much as this book did too. The iPhone version's index had a breakdown of a game chapter by game name as a sub index of concepts within it. I absolutely loved that and I dearly missed it in this one. The index is fine as it is, but having tasted the other books additional index by chapter concepts I found myself longing for it as this new book was also a perfect candidate for that format as well. But it is no reason to not get this book if the subject interests you. File this under 'I have to find something to complain about in a review' comments.

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I do think beginning, but versed, C++ developers could pick this up and succeed if they try. If you have Objective C down C++ is not really that hard to grok also (and the parts you don't use won't likely come into play as nearly as often as you might think.) Advanced users probably won't get a lot out of it, but if you are street learned on Cocos2d like I have been (and still am learning in many respects) it wouldn't hurt to have gone over this material once.

http://www.packtpub.com/cocos2d-x-by-example/book 

Thank for sticking out my wall of text this far. I am pretty sure there is an achievement for having made it this far. ;) 


I just upgraded Xcode to v4.6 (yah yah it took me long enough, we have been VERY busy all over the place.) BUT I am not ready to update all my devices to the latest iOS version (6.1 at the time of this entry) I always forget that I need to go get the previous SDK's. By far the easiest method is to simply use xcode to install them.

 

From the menu choose Xcode->Preferences and the Downloads tab. I just installed everything since we support all the way back to v4.3, actually we have v3.2 support in most of our games. I think that will change this time around. With Apple's mandate to support, among many things, iOS 6 and the new iPhone screen size (to include updates...) we can't update our older titles with adverts for our new stuff... its a 1st world dev problem... The writing was on the wall last year for a lot of this. We really slacked off on updating. I promise you we will get to it! According to analytics this will screw a couple people who play with older devices... Typically less than three in a month... I hope they forgive us! (I am sorry!!! I really am!!! Apple made me do it! Tongue out )

 

For now I wait to test the Doodle Army client against my recent server changes...


I have been making great strides in reading through a book on cocos2d (for iPhone) and although I have yet to go cover to cover (I keep jumping around!) I want to get a quick review out for them of the parts I did get a chance to study.

http://www.packtpub.com/creating-games-with-cocos2d-for-iphone-2/book

Let me just open with how refreshing it was to pick up a book you are ready for skill wise. I have a few games I worked on in the App Store and I have some [street] experience with cocos2d and this book is a nice fit. So I dive in. You might not want to use this book to start learning cocos2d. And if you read warnings, prefaces, and intros you better pick up on that from the books description real early and IF you still got this not knowing a thing about cocos2d 1) I applaud your tenacity 2) I shame you for not doing some up front due diligence... You have failed yourself. But this post is not about you, BUT if this matches what you did then hang onto the book and go check out Ray Wenderlich's intro tutorials for that (I can't leave you with nothing, this is where I started my education btw. I owe Ray a couple dinners now... I'll settle that account someday.)

 

So back to the BOOK! As I said I tend to read a book cover to cover, that is my preference. Schedules, releases, bugs, family are just going to let that happen this quarter. But I have been in and out of the text every down moment I had. Which is telling, considering I chose soaking up some tech text versus firing up some Minecraft. I must admit I jumped around a lot! There are some parts that build on one another. Luckily in every case I encountered there is a reference back to the moment I should be building on. Depending on your experience level you might not need that though.

 

A little side note on finding a specific 'thing' using the TOC (table of contents) or the index...  Since Each chapter is covers a fairly familiar game 'type' unto itself the TOC does not lend itself for specific message lookup. If you are looking for a specific CC message you will want to start in the index. What I did find interesting was each chapters game had a detailed index, so you could scan that and get a *REAL* good idea what each chapter holds. I think that is the primary way since the TOC through me a loop initially. I appreciate the cute names and the text is fun like from time to time. If your not in a mood for that you need to steel yourself for those moments. Work through it! I did. So can you! ;)

 

This a great concept book with enough concrete examples to get your own code moving in the right direction (including reasoning for the choice of convention in several places, which if was your only awareness of the way something was done *cough* *cough* you [I] would never have known otherwise.) I learned something new (old) from this book I missed in my grueling on-the-street training... For that I give the book high marks. Your mileage may vary, but I appreciate the alternate takes on approaches. I feel stronger because of it. Knowing they exist. 

 

So the best thing for me in the book... I wish the book was out when we figured out how to do Bluetooth that would have saved us some serious pain in the making of Doodle Army 2. You kids don't know how good you have it! Now get off my lawn! (and you might want to go check out this book!)

 

The price is not bad at all either! Check it out.

http://www.packtpub.com/creating-games-with-cocos2d-for-iphone-2/book

 


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