We need a friendly ENGINE, not a dysfunction EDITOR

[naive231]

First of all, many thanks for developers team to maintain this engine, whether bugs fix or new features added. I believed lots developers make their dreams come true by cocos2d-x.

Recently, I noticed that you change your developing energy to Cocos Creator a lot.
Though it is a great project, but I think it is a dangerous bet.

I think, every game engine should stand still at its position, especially on limited resources, no matter people, budget or time. As a popular, open sourced game engine, Cocos2d-x has it position already and it needs more resource to make it better,more stable and less bugs.

Game industry evolved very fast, so advances with time is important. Add supports of Vulkan, VR, AR, lighting techniques, fancy predefined shaders … is necessary of course. But you take your developing energy to build a IDE is just a very strange direction.

Bluntly said. Do you think that you can build a IDE better than Unity?
If we consider it from the resources or user experiences perspective, I don’t think so.

Cocos2d-x should stay and hold its position firmly: A friendly engine, friendly to other editors, friendly to resources themselves.

For the FBX, why we have to convert it to another type(c3b/c3t) then can put them to the scene? For the animations and scene deployment, why not we use the ASE file from Adobe After Effect to deploy our scene or to manipulate the animation of a sprite? Lots of artist, level, or sound editors do their jobs well and export their end products, but Cocos2d-x developers just can’t use them directly. In fact, Unity can’t use them all,too. But Unity accepts lots more resource types than Cocos2d-x. With Unity editor, whole developing flow is just really fine.

There is so much work to do! Why you gonna build a wheel again? Especially a well-done wheel. I believe that lots developers choose Cocos2d-x as their game engine absolutely because it is open sourced: They need control every implementation, not a closed box. Cocos Creator use scripting language to encapsulate details that developers need to know, and it is not open sourced. Why should I use it? There’s no differences with Unity.

I should mention those points again. Lots of new features need added, lots of compatibles need added, lots of bugs need be fixed. Lots of works to do, build a IDE absolutely not a option, especially a close-sourced one.

I noticed that you don’t have further roadmap about v3, even to v4. As a loyal developer, I really worried about your overall direction. I hope that you can recognized its the position of all game engines, think about why it became a popular engine.

Some words may be suffered. Apologized in advance.
Some perspective maybe wrong due to my misunderstanding. Apologized in advance again sincerely.

[luke2125]

Recently, I noticed that you change your developing energy to Cocos Creator a lot.
Though it is a great project, but I think it is a dangerous bet.

Hi @naive231

Why do you think, it’s a dangerous bet? I’ve have Unity installed in my Mac, the most recent version, and to me it’s good, but for 2d games is an overkill, especially the export huge file size. Also, the editor is somewhat intimidating, in Cocos Creator the editor is more user friendly, as per my opinion. Although, Cocos Creator will never be able to compete against the giants like Unity, Unreal, etc…, due to limitation of resources, it can definitely compete against other 2d game engines / framework and can become the defacto to future developers looking for a 2d unified game development system, that uses javascript, lua and very soon c++.

I think, every game engine should stand still at its position, especially on limited resources, no matter people, budget or time. As a popular, open sourced game engine, Cocos2d-x has it position already and it needs more resource to make it better,more stable and less bugs.

I would disagree, for an engine to grow, it has to innovate and be a step ahead of other engines, not a step behind. Just because Cocos2dx has a big market share, especially in Asia, doesn’t mean they should stop innovating and creating other products to benefit current and future developers. If resources are short, there are other means to increase resoruces ( patreon, kickstarter, donations, etc… ).

In my opinion, the achilles heel of Cocos ( Cocos2dx, Cocos Creator ) is content, which unfortunately is incomplete, dead links, etc… which hopefully will be remedy in the near future. Moreover, this site could benefit from a facelift, using the Cocos brand, and using metrics / analytics to show relevant data like ( # members, # games created with Cocos2dx, Cocos Creator, etc… ). This further info can help any new future developers coming over to the site, in using this framework.

Overall, Cocos framework ( Cocos2dx, Cocos Creator ) in my opinion, it’s a pretty good game engine / framework, it’s like a diamond in the rough, it just needs to be cleaned up a little bit more, to make it shine more… God Bless…

Sincerely,

Sunday

[catch_up]

for 2d games is an overkill, especially the export huge file size. Also, the editor is somewhat intimidating, in Cocos Creator the editor is more user friendly, as per my opinion

Yes, export size is more than what cocos2d-x can do.

Unity editor is not at all intimidating. Not sure, why you felt it. I started learning game programming from unity itself, and learning it was like a charm and easy and also thanks to its amazing documentation and tutorial and community support.
Only thing that cocos has always missed is the documentation/tutorial. Otherwise, it would be a 100% winning bet that there would be a lot bigger community and lot of books as well as youtube tutorials. In general, cocos2d-x is a superb engine but it then got restricted to those people who were willing to put effort in learning by themselves or through community.
@naive231 For cocos editor, slackmoehrl has already taken well care of documentation with some tit-bits missing.

Unreal can be intimidating as it’s UI feels bloated, You’re finding cocos editor as user-friendly, only bcoz more features are yet to be added.

@naive231
I somewhat agree with you but you see, that creating a ui editor is a must to allow more developers to use game engine. Plus, game programming/learning becomes fun with it. It’s not open source but it’s fine. Atleast it’s free to use. I think, it’s more than enough for me. Don’t know if cocos2d brand will make it subscription based for premium features in future. If so, then I might also think to look into Unity free edition again.

[slackmoehrle]

Moreover, this site could benefit from a facelift, using the Cocos brand, and using metrics / analytics to show relevant data like ( # members, # games created with Cocos2dx, Cocos Creator, etc… ). This further info can help any new future developers coming over to the site, in using this framework.

Touting how many users a forum has of how many visitors a site gets it not an indication that the product is good. Advertising these stats is a potential smoke and mirrors game. We are not about this. We want users to download the products and decide for themselves if our offerings work for them.

We also don’t know how many games are out there. We don’t require developers to submit games or otherwise track them to know. Also this number is not relevant. Just because a game engine says they have 10,000 games made with it doesn’t mean they are good games, games that use advanced capabilities, etc. 10,000 Flappy Bird clones would be nothing to brag about.

As far as incomplete docs, etc we always work on this. When I started over 2 years ago this was much, much worse. We are improving with each and every release.

[luke2125]

Touting how many users a forum has of how many visitors a site gets it not an indication that the product is good. Advertising these stats is a potential smoke and mirrors game. We are not about this. We want users to download the products and decide for themselves if our offerings work for them.

Hi @slackmoehrle

But to outsiders coming in and viewing how much activity a forum has, or how many members are active in the community, is pretty good indicator of the viability of a product, hence this case, game engine / framework. Users can download all they want, but if any game engine / framework, doesn’t have an active community, with resources like documentation, etc…, they will move on to another game engine, simple as that…

We also don’t know how many games are out there. We don’t require developers to submit games or otherwise track them to know. Also this number is not relevant. Just because a game engine says they have 10,000 games made with it doesn’t mean they are good games, games that use advanced capabilities, etc. 10,000 Flappy Bird clones would be nothing to brag about.

If such number is irrelevant, then take down the game section within this site, and use it for something else more relevant, afterall, most developers download a game engine / framework to develop games or do they? Indeed, a game engine may tout about how many games developers made, but usually smart game engines, place their most download games in the front-end, to showcase the abilities of such game engines…

As far as incomplete docs, etc we always work on this. When I started over 2 years ago this was much, much worse. We are improving with each and every release.

Good to know, but time will tell…

Thanks and God Bless…

Sincerely,

Sunday

[slackmoehrle]

But to outsiders coming in and viewing how much activity a forum has, or how many members are active in the community, is pretty good indicator of the viability of a product, hence this case, game engine / framework. Users can download all they want, but if any game engine / framework, doesn’t have an active community, with resources like documentation, etc…, they will move on to another game engine, simple as that…

I don’t agree. A community could be very active with complete fluff conversations/topics. I think most users download and evaluate the product. If they have questions they ask the community. Game Salad has a very active community and it is a product I would never use.

I don’t decide to buy a Subaru over a Fiat because of their user community. I try out both cars and I pick based upon my experience. I didn’t choose to use Microsoft Word instead of Open Office based upon the activity of a community. Before I started with Cocos2d-x, I took a day and got my hands dirty with Cocos2d-x, Unity and Unreal and the end of the day with each I looked at what I was able to create and what I felt I would be most productive in and that is what I picked. I didn’t even look at the community during that day. Afterwards and I learned more and needed clarification/help I then went to the community and asked questions.

If such number is irrelevant, then take down the game section within this site, and use it for something else more relevant, afterall, most developers download a game engine / framework to develop games or do they? Indeed, a game engine may tout about how many games developers made, but usually smart game engines, place their most download games in the front-end, to showcase the abilities of such game engines…

again, we differ in opinion here. The game section is for users to showcase their games, not something we curate for marketing purposes. By smart game engines do you mean Unity and Unreal? Don’t forget that we are completely free and completely open source. Unity and Unreal might be free, but you pay them for deployment. This is how they know about the games and can place them in view of users. You pay us nothing, so what do we do, goto the app store, download the games, see what libraries they are linked against and then showcase them? I’d think not.

[slackmoehrle]

I think we need to have a great engine and an editor as well. It seems that every game engine I can think of has an editor. Most new users prefer an editor over hand coding. It gives them a quick prototype and sense of accomplishment. This then motivates them to continue.

Growing up I don’t recall visual editors until maybe 2000, 2001. I think the first one I used was Borland Delphi.

Plus, the Editor needs an Engine under it. They go hand in hand. If you are a developer that prefers straight coding, I can surely respect that. This is my approach as well.

[luke2125]

Hi @slackmoehrle

I don’t agree. A community could be very active with complete fluff conversations/topics. I think most users download and evaluate the product. If they have questions they ask the community. Game Salad has a very active community and it is a product I would never use.

What’s your definition of a community being active?

I don’t decide to buy a Subaru over a Fiat because of their user community. I try out both cars and I pick based upon my experience. I didn’t choose to use Microsoft Word instead of Open Office based upon the activity of a community. Before I started with Cocos2d-x, I took a day and got my hands dirty with Cocos2d-x, Unity and Unreal and the end of the day with each I looked at what I was able to create and what I felt I would be most productive in and that is what I picked. I didn’t even look at the community during that day. Afterwards and I learned more and needed clarification/help I then went to the community and asked questions.

And when the Subaru breaks down, and you ask the mechanic to take a look at it, but he tells you that he the instructions manual is incomplete, or he just doesn’t know how to fix it, and there seems to be just that workshop which can only fix your car, so what then?

again, we differ in opinion here. The game section is for users to showcase their games, not something we curate for marketing purposes. By smart game engines do you mean Unity and Unreal? Don’t forget that we are completely free and completely open source. Unity and Unreal might be free, but you pay them for deployment. This is how they know about the games and can place them in view of users. You pay us nothing, so what do we do, goto the app store, download the games, see what libraries they are linked against and then showcase them? I’d think not.

What I mean by smart engines, is that they use the games created by the community to showcase the engine capabilities…I haven’t forgotten that your are FREE, since I’ve been following Cocos2dx for the past 3 years, but Unity has FREE edition that most people use, but then again, after 100K, you would need to upgrade… Where can I find in the game section, games made by Cocos Creator?

Thanks and God Bless…

Sincerely,

Sunday

[slackmoehrle]

And when the Subaru breaks down, and you ask the mechanic to take a look at it, but he tells you that he the instructions manual is incomplete, or he just doesn’t know how to fix it, and there seems to be just that workshop which can only fix your car, so what then?

What developers have always done. They roll up their sleeves and tinker, start to debug, start small and understand each piece. There haven’t always been libraries to handle functions and editors to drag and drop. I mean at one point everything that was needed had to be made.

How did John Carmack create Doom? Did he just give up and blame the lack of something, when he needed to write every piece for himself?

What I am trying to say is when did developers lose the lack of inventiveness?

What we try to do here is provide a great engine and tools surrounding it so that the developers that use them can create the ideas that they have in mind. We aren’t perfect here. We make decisions we think are best. We then improve. Rise and repeat. It is weird. If we did nothing, people would complain about being stagnate. If we keep releasing people complain about the direction and why we did what we did.

If you have great ideas on what makes a great game engine. We accept pull requests. An active community that types text into a browser is one thing. Contributing to the core development of a game engine is an entirely different beast. Please contribute if you want something changed and we are not doing it fast enough for you.

[luke2125]

What I am trying to say is when did developers lose the lack of inventiveness?

Hi @slackmoehrle

Do you mean creative? Can a creative person be inventive? I’m more of the creative type though, and have an idea on how to improve the engine, through a plug-in, but would need some documentation on how to create a package, it has to do with api documentation……

There haven’t always been libraries to handle functions and editors to drag and drop. I mean at one point everything that was needed had to be made.

Agreed, back in the days, it was pure BASIC or Machine Language, talking about the 80’s though, the reinasance of the computer age, heck, I even had a TRS-80 Color Computer, they call it back in those days, Coco, pure BASIC programming… That’s why the name Cocos brings back nice memories of my childhood and my days of programming…

What we try to do here is provide a great engine and tools surrounding it so that the developers that use them can create the ideas that they have in mind. We aren’t perfect here. We make decisions we think are best. We then improve.

Ok, fair enough, but then why not share those ideas with the community in general ( game creation ) . If I make a game with Cocos Creator, you decide to interview me, it gets posted on the blog, but never gets posted in the game section? Wouldn’t that be opaquing the engine’s abilities? If you go the game section, there’s like 3,000+ games , but which of those are made with Cocos Creator? You have a good product, then show the fruits of such product…Thanks and God Bless…

Sincerely,

Sunday

[slackmoehrle]

I’m more of the creative type though, and have an idea on how to improve the engine, through a plug-in, but would need some documentation on how to create a package, it has to do with api documentation…

There should be documentation for this available. If there isn’t, we should provide it. We should provide it when we are ready to also support it. Perhaps we are not. I am not current on this.

If I make a game with Cocos Creator, you decide to interview me, it gets posted on the blog, but never gets posted in the game section? Wouldn’t that be opaquing the engine’s abilities? If you go the game section, there’s like 3,000+ games , but which of those are made with Cocos Creator? You have a good product, then show the fruits of such product…

We are not a game publisher. It isn’t fair of us to promote your game and not everyone else. It also isn’t for us to decide to give the developer PR they may or may not want. If a developer wants PR they do it themselves. They control it. If we did this, then imagine the layers of work that come along with it. This would surely take a lot of time away from docs, development, staffing forums, etc.

We are a tools company. Unity and Unreal are tools and by the fact you pay them to deploy a publishing company as well. It’s like hiring an electrician and saying “while you are here, build me a deck”…

I’m serious when I say, if you want to see certain things done to your advantage…help out. We always need help and we appreciate it deeply. We would not even be here without you all.

Bonus points if you can tell me who said: products are packages of emphasis. some things are done in a product and some things not.

[naive231]

Well, some netizens derailments.

Package size can be controlled because it is open sourced.
(Is the package size really matter? Network infrastructure will just only be more perfect then ever. By that time, who cares about the size of package? )
The engine is free to use for developers or dreamers also because it is open sourced.
What game can inventive developers built, it is up to them. Anyway, it is open sourced.

My points are, why you spend valuable developing energy to REBUILD a wheel.
Especially a CLOSE-SOURCED editor that will never matched with Unity.

Sorry for saying them loudly. Because it really set itself on the self-destruction path.

Just like the Borland rewrite the Lotus 1-2-3, and wonder it can change domination position of Microsoft Excel. Lotus 1-2-3 may be better, but it lost its position long already. As you know, they disappear so quickly that even might no one heard about it.

Once Cocos Editor take over the whole building process(importing resources, scripting, authoring the animation, etc.) of the game, and leave no windows for developers that need to tweak it by themselves, it just like another Unity. A worse Unity.

Progress with the times, recognized its own position, don’t just imitate others.
Welcome the trend, cooperation and be the glue with industrial spec resources,engine or editor. That is what I said, a more friendly, more welcomed game engine.

[igormats]

Fully agree with @naive231

[piotrros]

Just my few cents:

I think editor is important, but you should divide your resources 50/50 for engine/editor. Engine is not changing from some time and android development is pretty painful (but I know it’s due android studio bugs in c++ support, which soon will be fixed). Also there are new technologies like Metal or Vulkan and new platforms like smartwatches, VR’s etc.

I’m worried about one thing the most:
cocos creator is closed-source.

From early versions I was using Cocos Studio which, while buggy, is still my editor. Why? Well, there’s no other choice. I have several games, with tons of scenes, animations, etc. I’m stuck at cocos2d-x 3.11.1, because after that something was changed in cocos2d-x core so there are some bugs while loading .csb files. There’s no support, because Cocos Studio is EOL’ed, I know. But we (developers) can’t fix Cocos Studio, because it’s not opensource.
Everyone would probably say that I should migrate to Cocos Creator. But ofc there’s no c++ support, which is MAIN language of this framework. I know c++ support is in work and I really appreciate guy is working on it. But it’s just a one man, which can stop his work one day and it’ll be lost.
I just hate js (guess I don’t have to explain how crappy this language is) and pain calling java/objc native code from it. C++ is just better. I’ve created few games with adobe flash and editor is great (except crashes), but now every Apple’s change in iOS breaks whole projects and we have to buy or even write ourselves various libraries for ads, in-app purchases and other stuff. The same problems I have with robovm, which is now no longer maintained. Again problems with libraries and new iOS releases.
But cocos2d-x c++ project gives us direct native projects, which really saves a lot of trouble. I always can have the latest libraries, can use less popular ones and don’t need some 3rd party libraries. Always there’s easier to adopt to apple changes in iOS framework.
Let’s say one day cocos creator will support c++ without any problems and I’d be able to migrate all my projects to this editor. But some day there may be new editor or cocos creator will be EOL’ed and it’ll be dead in no time. And because it’s closed-sourced there’s a risk, that again, I’d be stuck in some old cocos2d-x versions and there’ll be just more and more problems with it as time passes and new iOS (and maybe android) versions will come out.
So… please… consider opensourcing Cocos Studio and Cocos Creator.

[bilalmirza]

I also agree with putting more resources on the main engine.
@slackmoehrle maybe a poll to decide? if it changes anything?

[nivrig]

I agree with @naive231 that I’d like to see more focus or at least a clear roadmap to v4 on the C++ engine.

[entirely subjective rant follows]

While I understand Cocos must do what it has to do to grow and survive, personally speaking I don’t care about editors, 3D features or backwards compatibility.

Make a kick-ass 2D engine that works well across mobile, desktop and HTML5. Make it easy to integrate Ads, IAP, Analytics, data storage, crash reporting, generic mesh rendering. Look to other engines for inspiration on features perhaps. Unity has some nice line/trail and particle additions in the new 5.5 release. Ouzel has nice resource management, run time selection of rendering back ends and an emcripten target (I’m keeping an eye on this one TBH). Oxygine has a modular construction so you can easily exclude features you’re not using.

fx: out of breath

Incidentally, on the build size thing, there have been some experiments (link, link) on mobile apps and games showing a definite decrease in downloads with every Mb of package size added, so it’s definitely an issue.

[igorskuhar]

As a newcomer to the game development world I have to admit that Cocos Creator is the main reason I decided to give Cocos2D engine a try.

My language of choice is JavaScript (after using it for over 5 years at work to create apps) so I am more than happy to use it for games.

I tried Unity before but it feels too big for simple 2D games creation. Also, I don’t like the limitations of FREE version: no profiler access, annoying splash screen, no dark theme), and the PRO version is too expensive for amateur one-man studio.

I like the fact that Cocos2D-X is free and open source.
Cocos Creator has a great potential, and I believe it will be able to compete with Unity Editor in the future.

The documentation is not bad but it would be much more comfortable to work with if it was up to date.
I wish I could help with improving the CC, but for some reason it’s not open source, and the forum is not the best way to post issues/requests.

To summarize, I love the direction it’s heading but I am afraid that without open sourcing the CC, it may take ages to achieve what could have been done much faster and easier.
No matter what you decide, I am going to stick with you guys.

All the best,
Igor

[naive231]

@luke2125:

You know that. Network infrastructure will get better and better.
In 3rd or 4th grade city of China, the main market of Cocos2d-x, they had fine network environment better than before. According marketing report of our company(maybe it doesn’t really comprehensive)，the package size isn’t the main factor does the player download your game, not anymore. I don’t know why people still think the size can be a major pros of Cocos2d-x. As I said, this is just because it is open sourced, developer can decide what components would link into final product.

And the most important point, the Cocos2d-x have to go forward with the times. Lots of new features waited for be implemented like VR, Vulkan or AR. Absolutely not a editor. Maybe the dev team of Cocos2d-x or someone may think this engine should just keep its position - 2D game engine, so need a editor to provide more friendly developing experiences. But Unity had finished this job VERY WELL: Support more resources type, more animation authoring and events dispatching, more attributes or shaders switching,etc. Will the dev team ready to do that?

We should stand on the giant shoulder, leverage the best effect, make developing process better, just need one thing to make it happen: Become a more friendly engine. Welcome to more industrial spec resources, be the glue of popular editors(authoring tools of artists or audio effects engineers). The remaining parts of developing the game can just left behind the inventive user to take care of it.

[MikhailSh]

Absolutely agree with @nivrig. I’m still using old editor - CocosBuilder - just because it open sourced and it’s able to do almost all i need from UI editor. Sometimes i use Spine, Level Editor, Tile Map editor, etc. Though editors closed itself, but their runtime and parsers are open sourced. Also them don’t use their own version of cocos2d-x engine. And i think them do their work much better than Cocos Creator will be able to do (after Cocos Studio experience). And i worry that it may be closed at some time.

Also i like some features that were planned for v4, especially Entity-Component-System. And i worry that CocosCreator already component-based (but not ECS) - and it may prevent development of this feature.

There are still many features that can be done to enhance engine, for example, there is no any good support for MultiPass shaders and post process effects (them are available only for 3D).

[luke2125]

We are not a game publisher. It isn’t fair of us to promote your game and not everyone else. It also isn’t for us to decide to give the developer PR they may or may not want. If a developer wants PR they do it themselves. They control it. If we did this, then imagine the layers of work that come along with it. This would surely take a lot of time away from docs, development, staffing forums, etc.

Hi @slackmoehrle

I think you are misunderstanding my point, I understand that a developer must take care of its PR / Marketing, etc…However, on this section:

http://cocos2d-x.org/games

Where can I find games created by Cocos Creator ?

My point is simple, if a developer creates a game with Cocos Creator, uploads his / her game to the game section, me being a new potential user , comes to your web-site, goes directly to the games section, and would like to see what games have been created with Cocos Creator? The user doesn’t find any games created with Cocos Creator, the user becomes un-inspire and leaves…You see, not all users will go directly to the downloads page, and download the product…Some users would like to see results from using the product…

Bonus points if you can tell me who said: products are packages of emphasis. some things are done in a product and some things not.

Steve Jobs?

God Bless…

Sincerely,

Sunday