Recently I started work on an iOS game. I decided not to use the Core Animations framework provided by Apple and instead experiment with some third party game engines. I chose Cocos2D as it is an all in one package. It gives you the ability to add and control sprites, add cool graphics and animations, access to a sound engine and also 2 physics libraries.
Our most recent in house project was a fun children’s game called Whack Attack, and was built with Unity 3D and released for iPhones and android devices. Unity is a great tool, but it is definitely (and obviously) more geared for game crafting in the third dimension. Our game deals mostly with two dimensional sprites, although they are set in a pseudo 3d environment to attain some basic perspective.
Animations are one of the cornerstones of the iOS platform. Animations can add polish and visual interest to any application.
iOS comes with many default animations and effects. An animation between two views is referred to as a transition.
On a recent project, we needed to create an animation of a card to make it appear spinning. Creating this effect from scratch would involve a fair amount of code, but leveraging transitions made it easy.
On my previous project, I was busy delving into the relatively new world of Unity game scripting as my go-to solution for dynamic content. Now I’m working on a game that has me going back into the world of Flash, so I thought I would write a brief commentary on the differences I perceive between the two frameworks as it pertains to 2D game-crafting.