Cocos2d Cross-Platform Game Development Cookbook - Second Edition

Table of Contents

Cocos2d Cross-Platform Game Development Cookbook Second Edition

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Reviewers

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Why Subscribe?

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Sprites and Animations

Introduction

Downloading and installing Cocos2d

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

The 2D coordinate system

Getting access to MainScene

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding sprites to scenes

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Creating a sprite using RenderTexture

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Creating a custom sprite class

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Animating sprites

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding actions to sprites

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Drawing glPrimitives

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Adding the parallax effect

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

2. Scenes and Menus

Introduction

Adding a MainMenu Scene

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding text using CCLabel

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Adding buttons with CCMenu

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding a Gameplay Scene

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Transitioning between scenes

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Adding transition effects

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Adding a Level Selection Scene

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Scrolling a Level Selection Scene

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

3. Gestures, Touches, and the Accelerometer

Introduction

Understanding swipe

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Implementing tap

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding LongPress

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding pinch/zoom controls

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding rotation objects

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding panning

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Including touches

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Creating objects with touchBegan

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Moving objects with touchMoved

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Customizing touches in the sprite class

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding an accelerometer

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding a directional pad

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

4. Physics

Introduction

Adding physics to a game scene

Getting started

How to do it…

Adding physics objects

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Looking at different body types

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding sprite texture to physics objects

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Creating composite bodies

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Creating complex shapes

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Changing body properties

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Applying impulse with the touch control

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Applying force with the accelerometer

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Collision detection

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding revolute joints

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding motor joints

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding a game loop and scoring

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

5. Audio

Introduction

Adding background music

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding audio effects

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding a mute button

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding a volume slider

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding a pause and resume button

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

6. AI and A* Pathfinding

Introduction

Patrol enemy behavior

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Projectile shooting enemy

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Chasing enemy behavior

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

A* pathfinding

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

7. Data Storage and Retrieval

Introduction

Loading the XML file data

Getting started

How to do it…

How it works…

Saving to the XML file data

How to do it…

How it works…

Loading the JSON file data

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Loading the PLIST file data

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Saving the PLIST file data

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Using NSUserDefaults

How to do it…

How it works…

8. Effects

Introduction

CCEffects

Getting ready

How to do it…

Adding the bloom effect

Adding the blur effect

Adding the brightness effect

Adding the drop shadow effect

Adding the pixelate effect

Adding the stack effect

How it works…

Adding the glass effect

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding the motion streak effect

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Adding the particle effect

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Adding 2D lighting

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

9. Game Tools

Introduction

Glyph Designer

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Particle system

Getting ready

Particle Designer

Emitter configuration

Particle Settings

Color settings

Texture settings

Particle2dx

Motion

Color&Shape

Template

Export

How to do it…

How it works…

TexturePacker

Getting ready

Data

Texture

Layout

Sprites

How it works…

PhysicsEditor

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

10. Swift/SpriteBuilder Basics

Introduction

Implementing the Swift syntax

Getting started

How to do it…

Variables

Operators

Arithmetic operators

Comparison operators

Logical operators

Arithmetic increment/decrement and assignment operations

Control flow statements

Decision making statements

The if statement

The if else statement

The else if statement

The conditional expression

The switch statement

Looping statements

The while loop

Repeating the while loop

The for loop

The for in loop

Arrays

Looping through arrays

Adding, removing, and inserting objects in arrays

Important array functions

Dictionary

Adding and removing objects in a dictionary

Looping through items in a dictionary

Dictionary functions

Functions

Simple functions

Passing a parameter

Passing more than one parameter

Returning a value

Default and named parameters

Returning more than one value

Classes

Properties and initializers

Custom methods

Inheritance

Access specifiers

Optionals

Implementing Cocos2d Swift

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

SpriteBuilder basics

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

11. Porting to Android

Introduction

Installing the Android Xcode plugin

Getting started

How to do it…

Enabling USB debugging on a device

How to do it…

Running the SpriteBuilder project on a device

How to do it…

Porting a project to Android

How to do it…

No Java runtime error

How to do it…

Provision profile error

How to do it…

Blank screen error

How to do it…

Useful resources

Index

Cocos2d Cross-Platform Game Development Cookbook Second Edition

Cocos2d Cross-Platform Game Development Cookbook Second Edition

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: May 2015

Second edition: February 2016

Production reference: 1120216

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78439-323-6

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Cover image by Siddharth Shekar

Credits

Author

Siddharth Shekar

Reviewers

Hsiao Wei Chen

Tim Park

Commissioning Editor

Ashwin Nair

Acquisition Editors

Shaon Basu

Kevin Colaco

Content Development Editor

Akshay Shetty

Technical Editor

Humera Shaikh

Copy Editor

Shruti Iyer

Project Coordinator

Sanchita Mandal

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Mariammal Chettiyar

Production Coordinator

Conidon Miranda

Cover Work

Conidon Miranda

About the Author

Siddharth Shekar is a game developer with over 5 years of industry experience in game development. He has developed several games and published them on the iOS, Android, Amazon, and Windows Phone App Stores.

Siddharth has been programming for the last 11 years and is adept at C++, C#, Objective-C, Java, JavaScript, LUA, and now Swift. He has experience in developing games for the web, mobile, and desktop using Flash, Cocos2d, Cocos2d-x, Unity 3D, and Unreal Engine. Siddharth has also worked with graphics libraries such as DirectX, OpenGL, and OpenGL ES.

Apart from developing games, he also conducts game development workshops in major engineering colleges and is a visiting faculty in game development institutes.

Siddharth is also the author of the books Learning Cocos2d-x Game Development and Learning iOS 8 Game Development Using Swift, both published by Packt Publishing.

Currently, he is a lecturer in the game department of Media Design School, Auckland, New Zealand, where he teaches graphics programming and PlayStation 4/PS Vita native game development and mentors final year production students.

In his spare time, Siddharth likes to experiment with the latest game development frameworks and tools. Apart from being an avid gamer, he is interested in animation, computer graphics, and music, and is an absolute movie buff.

More information about Media Design School and Siddharth Shekar can be found at www.mediadesignschool.com.

Acknowledgments

As always, I would like to first and foremost thank my mom, Shanti Shekar, and dad, R. Shekar, for their continuing unconditional love and support.

I would like to thank Fiona Scott-Milligan, chief academic officer, and Syed Fawad Mustafa Zaidi, program coordinator, at Media Design School for encouraging me to continue working on the book. Many thanks to my colleagues at the Bachelor of Software Engineering Department—Asma, Salwan, Bindu, Imran, Shilpa, and Michael—for supporting me through the book writing process.

I can't thank enough Andreas from CodeAndWeb and Tom from 71Squared for their awesome tools as I would have spent most of my time developing the tools rather than making games otherwise.

I would also like to thank Packt Publishing for putting this book together. I would like to thank Adrian Raposo, Akshay Shetty, and Samantha Gonsalves for helping and guiding me at every step of the book writing process. Thanks to the technical reviewers for their technical feedback and tips; I have really learned a lot of new things in this process.

Finally, I would like to thank my friends, followers, and well-wishers for being a part of my life and tolerating me all these years.

About the Reviewers

Hsiao Wei Chen makes games for mobile devices using Unity, Cocos2d, and native code. She has also participated in a game jams, in which she attempted to create a game in 48 to 72 hours. Hsiao enjoys writing, and has taken part in NaNoWriMo, in which she attempted to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. She is also a blogger and writes tutorials and book reviews.

I would like to thank my two sisters and my parents who support me in everything that I choose to do.

Tim Park started programming in BASIC on VIC-20, moved on to C on Amiga, and then to other languages and frameworks that let him get things done. He started programming professionally on accounting systems, then on videogame consoles, and currently works on mobile and web development at Arctic Empire.

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Preface

Since its inception in 2007, the Apple App Store is still going strong with an average of almost 500 apps added on a daily basis. Out of them, almost 80% of the apps are games. Part of the reason for this is the amazing eco-system created by Apple to make the operating system and IDE available free of charge, making it easy to access for the average developer. The other part is Cocos2d, which is still one of the most widely-used free iOS game-development frameworks that makes games and app development very convenient.

With SpriteBuilder integrating Cocos2d into it, this makes it even more awesome, as now it is even easier to develop a simple prototype of a game without any code. Moreover, with minimum effort the same app or game can be run on a varied number of resolutions. Furthermore, we can now also port these games to Android without any need to rewrite the code. Cross-platform iOS game development, which was a dream for so many years, has now finally become a reality.

As Cocos2d itself has been there since the beginning of the first iOS device, the community is strong and helpful. There are also great tools that have been developed by third-party developers that make Cocos2d, an already awesome framework, even more awesome.

This book takes you through the recipes that are required to make any game. The chapters are laid out in a logical manner so that by following each recipe you will get closer to finishing and porting your game by the end of this book.

Hope to see your creations in the App Store soon.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Sprites and Animations, teaches you how to draw sprites in a scene, add colored sprites, and render 2D shapes using primitives. This chapter will also show you how to animate sprites, move sprites, add different kinds of actions to a sprite, and also look at the parallax effect to create a more dynamic scene.

Chapter 2, Scenes and Menus, will cover how to add scenes to the game, such as a gameplay scene, how to create buttons and labels in the scene, and how to create transitions between the scenes using various transition effects.

Chapter 3, Gestures, Touches, and the Accelerometer, will discuss various methods of user interaction, such as tapping, holding, swiping along with adding accelerometer inputs and gestures to the scene.

Chapter 4, Physics, will provide examples of how to add physics to the scene and make objects respond to physics. This chapter will also look at different body types and body properties, adding sprites to a body, applying force and impulse to a body, detecting collision responses, and building objects, such as a vehicle, by adding physics bodies together.

Chapter 5, Audio, will show you how to edit audio tracks to create music and sound effects, add the background music and audio effects to the game, add a pause and resume button to the game, and add a volume slider to control the volume of audio to the options menu.

Chapter 6, AI and A* Pathfinding, will include ways to add Artificial Intelligence to enemies in the game. This chapter will also look at creating patrolling, chasing, and projectile shooting enemies. It will cover a pathfinding to create more advanced AI logic for enemies using grids.

Chapter 7, Data Storage and Retrieval, will teach you how to save and load game progress on the device using NSUserDefault, create and access files using JSON, Plist, and XML files, for custom storage and retrieval of data.

Chapter 8, Effects, teaches you to add dynamic lighting to your game, manipulate the position and color of the light source dynamically using touch controls, and add 2D shadows to the game created by the light source. You will learn to add effects to the game using the CCEffects class of Cocos2d to create interesting effects in the game.

Chapter 9, Game Tools, provides insights to using industry standard tools, such as TexturePacker, Glyph Designer, PhysicsEditor, Particle Designer, and Sprite Illuminator, to create more visually appealing and performance-optimized games.

Chapter 10, Swift/SpriteBuilder Basics, shows you how to develop games in Apple's latest programming language, Swift. We will see the differences between Objective-C and Swift in this chapter. We will also see how to import Objective-C classes into Swift to reduce the redundancy of code. This chapter will also provide insight into using SpriteBuilder to develop more robust games.

Chapter 11, Porting to Android, will take a look at how to take your existing game developed for iOS and port it to Android. We will learn how to install the Android Xcode plugin, prepare the device for deployment, and finally run the project on an Android device.

What you need for this book

To develop games using Cocos2d, all you need is the latest version of OSX El Capitan, SpriteBuilder, and Xcode. All these applications are available in the Apple App Store and are free to download. The recipes in this book are designed for iPads, so iPad 3 onwards can be used for testing purposes. To develop on Android, an Android device is required. It is better to use the Galaxy or Nexus series phones as they are tried and tested.

Who this book is for

The structure of the book is designed in such a way that it is easy to access a specific recipe and get the necessary information from it. Each recipe is self-contained and easy to follow. This book is for intermediate to advanced users who have some basic knowledge of how Cocos2d works. Although the basic concepts are covered in this book, they are not explained in depth, so some prior experience is required.

Sections

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it…, How it works…, There's more…, and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:

Getting ready

This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.

How to do it…

This section contains the steps required to follow the recipe.

How it works…

This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.

There's more…

This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.

See also

This section provides helpful links to other useful information for the recipe.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds