outline.md

Cocos2d-x Programmer's Guide

C++ and Lua

Table Of Contents

1. About Cocos2d-x

   • A very brief history:
     • Launched in July 2010, cocos2d-x is the best open-source game engine available.
     • Versioning information (i.e C++, JS, Lua, not related to Cocos2d-iphone, etc)
     • Cocos2d-x comes in a variety of flavors:
       • c++ c++
       • Lua Lua
   • Prerequisites:
     • Operating systems and tools supported:
       • For Android development.
       • For iOS and OSX development.
       • For Linux development.
       • For Windows and Windows Phone development.
   • Why choose Cocos2d-x vs other game engines?
   • Where to get help:
     • Official Forums

2. Basic Concepts and Essentials

3. Sprites

   • What are Sprites?
   • Creating Sprites:
     • Creating a Textured Sprite.
     • Creating an Untextured Sprite.
     • Creating a Sprite From a SpriteFrame.
     • Creating a Sprite From SpriteCache.
     • Creating a Sprite From a Rect.
   • Sprite Manipulation:
     • Resizing.
     • Anchor Point and Position.
   • SpriteSheets.

4. Actions

   • What are Basic Actions:
     • Animate.
     • Fade In/Out.
     • Move.
     • Rotate.
     • Scale.
     • Tint.
     • Easing.
   • What are Sequences:
     • Spawn.
     • Reverse.
   • Running Actions and Sequences.

5. Building and Transitioning Scenes

   • What is a Scene?
   • Creating a Scene:
     • Creating a Node Tree.
     • Node properties to its descendants.
   • Coordinate Systems:
     • Converting between coordinate systems.
   • Transitioning between Scenes.

6. UI

   • Labels:
     • BMFont.
     • TTF.
     • Label Atlas.
     • SystemFont.
   • Label examples.
   • Menu/Menu Items:
     • What makes up a menu?
     • Menu Items and adding to a Menu.
     • Examples:
       • Create Menu with 1 item.
       • Create Menu from array of items.
       • Lambdas.
   • Buttons.
   • Scroll.
   • Layout.

7. Other Node Types

   • TMX.
   • Particle.
   • Parallax.

8. Event Dispatcher

   • What is the EventDispatch mechanism?
     • Responds to user events.
     • The basics:
       • Event listeners encapsulate your event processing code.
       • Event dispatcher notifies listeners of user events.
       • Event objects contain information about the events.
   • 5 types of event listeners:
     • EventListenerTouch - responds to touch events
       • describe what to override.
     • EventListenerKeyboard - responds to keyboard events
       • describe what to override.
     • EventListenerAcceleration - responds to accelerometer events
       • describe what to override.
     • EventListenMouse - responds to mouse events
       • describe what to override.
     • EventListenerCustom - responds to custom events
       • describe what to override.
   • Registering event with the dispatcher.
   • Removing events from the dispatcher.

9. 3D

   • 3D Sprite.
   • 3D Actions.
   • 3D Animations.
   • Placeholders for: Lights, Shadows, Cameras.

10. Lua

    • call custom c++ from Lua.
    • bindings to c++.
    • subclassing.
    • Placeholders for: memory management, Debug a Lua Game.

11. Services

    • Other SDK's.
    • Plugin-X.
    • Placeholders - IAP, FB.

12. Physics

    • What options and why integrated physics engine?
    • Physics concepts.
    • Physics world, bodies.
    • Collision.
    • Examples.

13. Audio

14. Advanced Topics

    • Best Practice - optimization, memory, performance, profiling.
    • Sound.
    • SQLite.
    • Subclass Cocos2d-x classes.
    • Data structures (i.e Vector).
    • Custom OpenGL and Shaders (what to cover here? CustomCommand?).
    • c++11 usage.
    • Rendering pipeline (notes about this in the wiki).
    • Networking - curl, http.
    • ccConfig.h (include and the defines that you can enable for debugging memory leaks, drawing, etc.).
    • File system access.
    • Resolution independence.