Cocos2d - what and why ?

Opengl es can be a bit daunting for the people who are relatively new to the game programming scene, and truth be told, using opengl es is not necessary.

For development of basic 2d games opengl es is certainly an overkill, it just doesn't justify the learning curve.

But don't give up hope just yet, Cocos2d is a really great , easy and fun option of getting started with game programming on iOS devices. but this doesn't mean that cocos2d is weak or insufficient in any way, fairly complex games can be build using cocos2d.

Cocos2d also come bundled with two very good physics engines box2d and chipmunk allowing it to bring in the simplicity and ease in game design.

And the best part is that it's FREE.
And the licensing allows for creation of proprietary products, the literature available in form of books are abundant.

So go ahead and create the next angry birds.
Here is how to do it :)

http://maniacdev.com/2011/09/tutorial-develop-an-angry-birds-like-game-with-cocos2d-and-box2d-step-by-step/


Regards,
Ishan Malviya

Starting opengl development on linux

I have been working on opengl es for iphone from a past few days. But the development environment is available only at my home.

So i thought of trying my hands on opengl too, which will be easier to pick up, owing to the sheer amount of literature available for it.

I have Kubuntu 11.10 installed on my netbook ( a samsung n150 plus, dual core atom) and i use code:blocks as the development ide, when i tried building the provided sample for opengl i got the "GL/gl.h no such file or directory" error.

I looked around for a solution and this is how i was able to solve the problem.
The freeglut3 and freeglut3-dev libraries were missing.

after installing them i was able to execute the example successfully.

On a debian based system we can install them as,

apt-get install freeglut3 freeglut3-dev

Will share more on my experiments with opengl as I delve deeper on this exciting technology.

Regards,
Ishan Malviya