something in the way

Cocos2D is a game engine similar to Flash in that it is a 2d engine but it natively renders to OpenGL ES.  Cocos2D-iphone was originally a port of Cocos2D, a python game engine.  But the similarities to Flash and DisplayObjects = Nodes, Sprites, Scenes, Layers etc. This helps to port games over fairly quickly or start in productive in cocos2D.

Having this in javascript is a great thing! It runs on html5/canvas/javascript.

What is cocos2d-javascript?

Cocos2d-javascript is a 2D game/graphics engine based on cocos2d-iphone but designed to run in the web browser. It uses the latest features available in HTML 5 allowing real-time rendering of 2D graphics without the need for plug-ins such as Adobe Flash.

While HTML 5 is still new and not fully supported across all browsers it won’t be long before the vast majority of web users are able to enjoy all that it offers. When this time comes cocos2d-javascript will be an excellent way to develop games and applications.

To see a small sample of what is on offer, please check out the demo section.

cocos2d engines are now available on almost all platforms, so if you are building a 2d game and need a 2d engine typically with Box2D physics, cocos2d offers lots of ways to get the game out there with some porting work.

• cocos2d-javascript (web)
  • cocos2D-javascript site
  • cocos2d-javascript at github
  • cocos2d-javascript docs
  • demos
    • Sprites
    • Tile Maps
    • Jump ‘n’ Run
    • Mario demo
    • Breakout demo
• cocos2d-iphone (mobile)
  • cocos2d-iphone site (objective-c)
  • cocos2d-android-1 (java)
  • cocos2d-android (java)
• cocos2d – original python (desktop)
  • cocos2d site
  • cocos2d python download
• cocos2d other
  • cocos2d-x c++ (C++ port for win, iphone, android-ndk)
  • Similar to cocos2d – andengine (android java)

Good news for the beginning of hardware accelerating the web, WebGL will now be part of the main Chrome releases not just a compile option for Chromium nightlies.

Google Chrome 9 enables WebGL support by default. “WebGL is a new web technology that brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the browser without installing additional software” and it can be used to create cool applications like Google Body Browser, Field, Aquarium and more.

The update for Chrome 9 also sandboxes Flash, WebGL and plugins like extensions and tabs so that using them will be more secure and not crash the browser or the tab. Hopefully Safari has this soon, and then a few years from now IE may get it. Or they will put out their own DirectX web plugin so everyone has to write it twice like currently in game development. /sarcasm

Mobile games are on slower hardware, similar to later 90′s computers so native is a great way to go for 3d and 2d game development because of this limitation at the current time and well into the next few years.  Take this time to learn you some native gamedev. andengine isn’t native directly as it is Java based but compiled with the Dalvik JIT virtual machine. Another way to go native on Android is the Android NDK which allows C and C++.

• andengine download at google code
• andengine examples at google code
• andengine blog
• Mercurial repository at google code
• cocos2d-android port of cocos2d-iphone with BSD license
• rokon android is another BSD licensed android game engine

The engine also has extensions that can be easily added and some great ones exist already.

Alchemy is going to shake things up a bit.  As witnessed before from Quake running in flash and now ODE compiled to run in flash using Alchemy (LLVM based). It is an early test but shows what could be possible.

Mihai Pricope has a post with sources on how he got the ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) a great open source physics engine for 3D, running on the AVM2 Flash Player virtual machine.

I’ve took Alchemy for a test and decided to compile ODE (Open Dynamic Engine). Just to add yet another physics engine to the Flash World. It was a hell of a ride but I finally got to produce some bouncing balls :). For a still unknown reason some as 3d libraries have been very slow to render 6 translucent walls and 2 balls. Papervision3D seems to move quite decent.

You can download the ode sources from here. To recompile them do (you need to have the Alchemy environment turned on):

Flash 10 will become mainstream shortly and with that the possibilities of using Alchemy in your projects is becoming a reality for production.  But what specifically can you do with Alchemy, a project that helps to compile C/C++ code into AVM2 capable files?

Alchemy described from Adobe:

With Alchemy, Web application developers can now reuse hundreds of millions of lines of existing open source C and C++ client or server-side code on the Flash Platform.  Alchemy brings the power of high performance C and C++ libraries to Web applications with minimal degradation on AVM2.  The C/C++ code is compiled to ActionScript 3.0 as a SWF or SWC that runs on Adobe Flash Player 10 or Adobe AIR 1.5.

Alchemy is based on the LLVM Low Level Virtual Machine that allows new levels of code translation.  Maybe this can lead to more effective and performing code to run on the iPhone with flash player 10. Or some type of system that allows flash developers to code in AS3 or take projects and get them ready to run on the iPhone much like some of the Java to Cocoa compilation systems and Unity3D using mono to compile down to iPhone capable code.