A place to breathe

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Swift and Objective-C ... and Cocos2D-Swift and Cocos2D.X

For a year since Nusantara Software released Tumeriq SDK on github,  we didn't really actively work on it anymore. Mostly because we're a bit confused on the direction of the language and platform in the mobile world. But it's time to reflect since we'll be going full force this year with our gaming platform.
As a developer of iOS back in 2011, we made decision to go all in with Apple platform. We bought Macs, iPhone, iPad, learn Objective-C, we made significant investments. We released a few games and we are really excited. And then Android came in with its own set of toolchains. I gave a few tries on Android tools and I didn't like it. So I just ignore Android.

Come to a point where Android users are now so significant,  that many requested our games to be ported to Android. The problem is, with customization of all the screen sizes that come with various forms, it was almost impossible for us to cater with very limited resources. Fortunately, Apportable is there so we can port the work onto Android.

I know there are many who are having this dilemma. Should I go all in with Cocos2D swift? Or should I go with cross platform Cocos2D.X? There's a danger of not using Swift, and there's a danger of not creating your game cross platform.

If we don't take the Swift path, we'll probably loose the power of the language itself. The demo shows that we can do rapid prototyping with Swift.  But the danger of getting into Swift is that, we'll probably get stuck with SpriteKit somehow, which I don't want.

Cocos2D.X is here to stay,  cocos2d-swift depends on Apple's direction. Should we go with Cocos2D.X or should we go full force with swift? To make matters worse, Swift is closed source (unlike Objective-C) and integrates heavily with XCode. To appreciate using Swift, we should also use XCode.

We'll probably have to make a tradeoff between Cocos2D.X and Swift for next Tumeriq release.
In the meantime, I'll learn Swift and enjoy the videos.


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About Me

I'm currently a software engineer. My specific interest is games and networking. I'm running software company called Nusantara Software.