Cocos2D-iPhone Xcode Template

I’m still researching how to get started with some game development on the iPhone and one of the articles I came across was a short tutorial detailing how to setup and start an application/game on the iPhone using the free cocos2d-iphone engine. Being the anal person I am, I couldn’t just refer to the article every time I wanted to start a new project, so I decided to research how to put together my own template for Xcode that would do all the dirty work necessary automatically. It turns out it’s quite easy to put together an Xcode template and what kind of good natured developer would I be if I didn’t share with the rest of the world?? I went ahead and created a new git repository with the template. To grab it, go ahead and follow these quick instructions..

cd /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Project\ Templates/Application
git clone git://github.com/swemoney/xcode_cocos2d_iphone_app_template.git Cocos2D\ Based\ Application\ \(0.6.x\)

Do that in any terminal and next time you start up xcode and try and create a new project, you should see a Cocos2D-Based Application options there that will give you the basic starting blocks for using the cocos2d engine.. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Now includes version 0.6.3 of Cocos2d-iphone as well as a menu scene.

News and stuff..

After finding out that my free Joyent Facebook accelerator was going to expire in a week, i started acting fast.. I had to move Halo 3 Players from Joyent to my SliceHost slice (that also hosts this blog). Being a man strapped for cash, I really couldn’t afford the ‘upgrade’ offer that Joyent was offering. For a 512MB server, they wanted me to pay a $75 setup fee (to setup a server I’ve been using for a year now?) and then $75 a month on top of that. They had annual deals and even a ‘buy 1 year and get a 2nd for free’ deal for christmas, but again.. I’m broke. So I’m sticking with SliceHost and I think I’ll stick with them for all of my ‘cheap’ hosting needs. I’ve had a 512MB Slice on SliceHost for almost 2 years (?) now and it works fantastically.. And it’s about half as much as Joyent’s! Anyone who needs affordable hosting that’s awesome, check out SliceHost!

So the server move went well. Better than I thought it would. I actually rebuilt my Slice from scratch just so I could make sure it was clean and ready to serve up Halo 3 Players. It only took me most of a night to get all my web stuff back up and running and now I can just spend some spare time tweaking things.

What else is new? I’ve diving in, head first, into iPhone development. I’ve never really done anything with C, C++, Objective-C, Cocoa.. or anything really besides Ruby. So I’ve been cramming my brain with lots of new information and I think I’m doing quite well. I’d love to start developing games but I’m having a hard time finding a good ‘getting started’ book. I really need something that teaches the basic concepts behind efficient game programming, so if anyone knows of a good place for me to start, leave a comment or something. That would be great!

That’s all I got for now. I’m thinking of doing a nice blog post when I have some very general understanding of game programming to help anyone else who’s just starting out. Until then.. Have a great holiday and I’ll write more whenever I have something to write about! x=)