Cocos2d Tutorial

Developing games with cocos2d

Cocos2D is a game development platform.

It uses a hierachy of classes

• Director - there is only one director. The director is running scenes
• Scene - there can be multiple scenes, but at any one time only one scene is running
• Layers - a scene can be composed of multiple layers
• Sprites - sprites are animated images which can be part of a layer

Hello world

To create a simple application we have to:

• import the cocos framework
• initialize the director
• create an object (layer, label, sprite, etc.)
• add the object to a scene
• let the director run the scene

This is the code to make this basic application which displays 'Hello World' inside a window.

import cocos

cocos.director.director.init()
label = cocos.text.Label('Hello World', font_size=72)
scene = cocos.scene.Scene(label)
cocos.director.director.run(scene)

Built-in commands

• cmd+I opens the interpreter shell
• cmd+S takes a screen capture
• cmd+P pauses the screen
• cmd+F toggle to full screen
• cmd+X toggle FPS display
• cmd+W toggle wire-frame

The built-in interpreter

Installing Python modules within the Anaconda environment

• Install the Anaconda Distribution (https://www.anaconda.com/distribution/)
• Install VS Code from within Anconda (this installs automatically the Python extensions)
• Launch VS Code
• Select the /anaconda/bin/python3 environment ('base': conda)

Install Cocos2D for the user only

pip install --user cocos2d

Run platformer.py

To do

• Object attribute editor (Sprite, Layer, etc.)
• Particle systems demo
• Breaking Flappy Bird into parts (bird, walls, score)
• Add OpenGL primitives (Lines, Recangle)
• Save screenshots
• Add screenshots to the documentation
• Place the documentation on ReadTheDocs
• Add board games (memory, nurikabe, snake)