Now that Apple is going to release the Mac App Store there is bound to be lots of games. I'm curious, in your opinion, what is a good Mac 2D game engine to use for game development that has an objective-c interface?
Thanks
Cocos2D which I understand is popular for the iPhone also now has Mac support.
Disclaimer: I haven't tried it.
Currently the most widely popular is Cocos2D, although I would suggest to go with either Kobold2D (free) or KoboldTouch (subscription, in active development).
You can find some information about Cocos2D here:
http://macoun.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/6GS10.zip
Those are the materials from this year's Macoun' session on Cocos2D. It has some slides (german only, sorry) as well as some links and the sources. The slides have some examples. Might help to get you startet.
Cheers,
Marcus
"Love" is an epic game engine http://love2d.org/
Although it's not objective-c (it's lua)
At the time of writing i haven't tried it yet.
Related
I would like to do some fairly simple audio programming on OS X (using Lion and Xcode 4.3) -- synthesizing tones with given frequencies, mainly. Trouble is, Apple's documentation on the subject is way too high-level for my current knowledge of the subject. I've searched for weeks now for something that will get me started, to no avail.
Does anyone know of some Core Audio basic tutorial, or even some sample code, that will help me do fairly simple Core Audio tasks so that I can progress to understanding the Apple documentation?
I would suggest the book Learning Core Audio There is also sample code from the book at that site.
If you are looking to synthesize audio fairly easy, you are going to want to use a 3rd party library. Two possible solutions are FMOD and SuperCollider.
The pros and cons between the two are really that supercollider runs as a server that you can connect from app as a client and FMOD is compiled into an app and uses core audio to synthesize the sound. FMOD is clearly the choice if you are planning on distributing this app. SuperCollider also has it's own language that you'd have to learn the basics of to start tailoring your sounds synthesis. Here are some links:
FMOD:
FMOD Downloads (Comes with a bunch of sample code)
Super Collider:
SC Server Download
Sine Wave Generator Sample App
Great source of SC scripts and examples
It appears the language is the same for either device ios or mac os on a mbp, but if I learn Objective-C in a tutorial, won't I also need to learn cocoa or cocoa touch to program effectively?
I'm not sure how to start on my path of learning to program an ios device. I know I need to learn objective-c and that appears to work on all apple products. Then do I move to cocoa touch for ipad and iphone? What comes after objective-c?
The type of project is akin to a web app but native objective-c app instead. Have ui, buttons, the app hits some back end location, returns data, I put it on that same ui. Only, as stated, use objective-c and whatever framework and library to do it (that's my dilemma. I dont know what to do next after objective-c).
thanks.
Cocoa and Objective-c go hand in hand. For getting started, I would suggest going over some old WWDC footage and following some of the examples there.
As far as Cocoa and Cocoa touch are concerned, they are very similar in many aspects, same name conventions, similar structure, etc. Learn one, and you can easily pick up the other.
#craig adds:
I would further this answer by also mentioning that Objective-C is a programming language, while Cocoa/Cocoa Touch are collections of frameworks that are provided by Apple, and used by developers to add functionality to their programs. (Which are written in Objective-C.) The Cocoa frameworks contain various UI components like buttons, table views, sliders, etc. in addition to various fundamental classes like NSString and other text- and graphics-based APIs
I started my learning by watching thenewboston's xcode tutorials:
you can begin with this one
Good luck :)
I prefer books for some strange reason and I found that the Apress series of IOS development is really good. The book goes through developing iPhone and iPad apps using all kinds of Cocoa libraries. There's a lot of good books out there on the subject; I would go find one that looks like it would suit your needs.
I am planning to build a BOOK APP (with text, images, animation, sound etc) for iPad. I started learning Obj-C But I came to know about frameworks like Corona & Cocos2D and Corona boasts to be promising for my scenario. I have no working experience with any of these but am willing to learn. Which one is better to start with for building a multi-media book app? XCode & Obj-C OR Corona OR Cocos2D and how would would be the learning curve?
I can't speak for Corona, but Cocos2D is just an Obj-C library, so you'll still have to know a bit of Obj-C to get it going.
That said, I started with just Objective-C, then found Cocos2D which greatly improved my development speed, as all the groundwork is already implemented. Cocos2D has a much more managable learning curve than doing it all from scratch, and there are a number of great resources available (cocos2d forums, this blog, etc).
A quick Google search showed me that Corona has costs associated with it for distribution - cocos2d does not.
I'd have to say Corona SDK is perfect for making a book app as you described. The basis for this claim is that there have been iPad eBooks created using Corona which have made the top charts on the app store (See: http://blog.anscamobile.com/2010/11/rabbit-and-turtle-race-to-1-in-app-store-ebooks/ for a quick example).
Also, Chronicle Books (San Francisco based book publisher) has used Corona SDK to produce an eBook for the Nook platform:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/animal-show-chronicle-books/1100618669
And several others I can't think of off the top of my head.
The reason why Corona is great is because books are about getting images, text, and interactivity on the screen, and with Corona, you can do each one of those things in just a few lines of code or less!
Also, with the full-power of OpenGL, you have near limitless possibilities when it comes to adding as much--or as little--interactivity to your book as you want. With Corona, you really do get to focus on the logic behind your book app, rather than all the technical details which are handled transparently for you in the background.
For more information on eBook and Corona, visit this page:
http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/switch/e-book-developers/
I have some basic familiarity with Objective-C, but prefer Ruby, so I'm thinking of playing around with MacRuby. Is it possible to use MacRuby to develop applications for the Mac App Store, or do I have to use Objective-C? (Note that I don't care so much about iOS/the iPhone and iPad store right now, just the Mac OS X app store.)
And to answer the actual question, yes, see http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2010-November/006475.html.
Short answer: Yes, you can, technically, build such an app. You need to revisit the store guidelines to know what requirements must be met to submit to the various stores.
This comes up sporadically; beyond the guidelines that #NSResponder mentioned, the reality is that you'll just be spending a lot of extra & unnecessary time if you decide to use MacRuby unless you plan on using some large chunk of already written Ruby code in your app.
Learning Objective-C is about 2% of the overall learning needed to be an effective Cocoa developer. The other 98% is everything from memory management model to standard idioms like KVC/KVO/delegation to NIB files to the myriad of classes & APIs throughout the system.
All of those things are written in Objective-C (or C) with documentation targeting Objective-C and examples written in Objective-C.
As well, the entire tool chain is focused on validating, compiling, indexing, debugging, and manipulating Objective-C.
If you want to use MacRuby to build a real Cocoa app, you are going to have to know Objective-C through and through anyway. And you are going to have to deal with whatever bugs and impedance mismatch is in the bridge layer, too.
Yes. As the Mac developer forums says:
My Mac app is not written in
Objective-C. Is this allowed on the
MacApp Store?
Yes, provided it also adheres to the
Mac App Store Review Guidelines at
http://developer.apple.com/appstore/mac/resources/approval/guidelines.htmland
the Mac Developer Program License
Agreement at
http://developer.apple.com/programs/terms/mac/mac_program_agreement_20101020.pdf
(via alloy)
Read the submission guidelines here: https://developer.apple.com/appstore/mac/resources/approval/guidelines.html
I've been programming in VB.net for a while now, and I finally got access to a mac to make ipod apps. What are some useful sites, videos, etc. that could help me get used to Objective C and the Xcode IDE? I've stumbled upon the samples on the apple dev site, but none of them really give good examples which I could learn the syntax of the language from.
Thanks for the help, Objective C is really a big change from VB.net!
Here are some helpful starter references from the Apple site, first for Objective-C itself, then for the Cocoa frameworks.
Learning Objective-C: A Primer
Cocoa Fundamentals Guide
There are also "getting started" videos available from http://developer.apple.com/iphone (you have to register as a developer to get access, but that's free)
You might want to take a look at MonoTouch if you like working with .Net. As far as I'm aware, it only works with C#, but it will let you use the .NET api to program for the iPhone. Might be worth looking into if you don't want to learn Objective C.