I’m very inactive in this forum recently. But hope someone still remember me, oops.
About Cocos Studio
Cocos Studio was started at 2012, inherited from an in-house editor for Chukong’s Fishing Joy 2. A chief programmer from Fishing Joy 2 became the leader of Cocos Studio. The original goal is to have a solid editor for Cocos2d-x. I haven’t gotten actual control of this project until 2014 Q4. The leader of Cocos Studio refused to accept any suggestions from neither Ricardo nor me.
At 2015 January, Cocos Studio still has a very bad reputation, especially in China. Here’s a link to Zhihu (can understand as Chinese Quora) https://www.zhihu.com/question/36068758, you can read via google translate. Users are asking why Chukong haven’t redesigned an editor even if everyone knows Cocos Studio is very hard to use. Only a small percentage of cocos2d-x users use Cocos Studio in their commercial games. And without a solid editor, the R&D progress of cocos2d-x on 3D features are very slow.
When I look back to the failure of Cocos Studio, I think there’re some key factors:
- Use mono and C# as programming language, which is different from cocos2d-x major languages: C++/Lua/JavaScript. That means, if Studio has a extension mechanic, developers had to use C# to write a plugin for Studio, use C++ to extend cocos2d-x framework, and use Lua/JavaScript to write game logics.
- Haven’t adopt data-driven design
- Have no extension/plugin mechanic. No one has created a plugin for Cocos Studio.
About Cocos Creator
In 2014, Chukong invested a new company to create an editor for HTML5. That’s Fireball-x. In 2015 Q4, when I was back to lead the whole engine department, I made the decision of acquiring Fireball-x. With the whole Fireball-x genius and the original cocos2d-x team, we have the new editor Cocos Creator.
Cocos Creator are trying to meet the requirement of C++ and Lua today, while its original target market and basis architecture was HTML5. We indeed have some solutions in evaluation, but it takes time.
The Creator team is made up with best developers, many of them are very active in this forum, such as @pandamicro @zhangxm @owen, they are always ready to listen and help developers. The leader of Cocos Creator is a game designer. He used to worked in Germany, in Ubisoft, created PC web game via Unity, created a popular Unity plugin ex2d. I think he is even more experienced then Ricardo and I in the game industry.
The Replacement
At 2016 January, we released Cocos Creator v0.7-beta.
I hoped we can still keep both Studio and Creator on development parallel in at least 6 months, have a smooth switch. But in March, the board of Chukong finished their patience. They don’t want to invest in 2 editors competing with each other and waste money. “So if Creator is better, close Studio”.
Currently, the whole Cocos Studio team are all laid off. The project of Cocos Studio is totally closed now.
The Next
Closing Cocos Studio was done in a hurry, not my expectation. As everyone can see, Cocos Creator is not ready enough today to fully replace Cocos Studio. What we’re doing are:
- A converter to import Studio project into Creator (coming very soon)
- Lua support
- C++ support
- Documentation: Studio to Creator Migration Guide
@slackmoehrle already posted the roadmap of Cocos Creator
I can’t guarantee every feature goes on time, but we will DO OUR BEST.