2D cross-platform game engine for Android and iOS? [closed]

Question

I've worked for some time with Unity3d and found it's 2D part with OnGUI() or GUITextures too clumsy. Also, even a smallest game done on Unity3d is at least 10MB download which is just too much for a 2D game.

So, I'm currently looking for an engine for 2D. I've tried Cocos2D but it's iOS only and I wouldn't like to rewrite everything into another language for Android (so, e.g. Java port of Cocos2d for Android is not an option). Instead, I want to write the code once and with least hassle deploy it on iOS, Android and possibly Windows Phone 7. I have both Mac and Windows.

Just to be more detailed, here are my requirements to the engine:

• must be cross-platform
• must be efficient
• should be C++, Java, C# or Objective C since I'm comfortable with them and NOT Flash, Javascript, HTML5 since I am not a web developer
• must have a large community, tutorials, additional libraries which cover most of the stuff you'd have when developing on iOS or Android directly (in-app billing, facebook etc.)
• the final delivered package must be not too large
• the engine can be free, but I also wouldn't mind paying a reasonable price

I've found the following engines:

• Marmalade (and IwGame engine on top of it) - C++, found overall very positive reviews of Marmalade but not sure about IwGame. EDIT (March 2013): Looks like Marmalade SDK now includes Cocos2Dx and some in-built IDE which makes it much better (and costs $150 per year for indie dev which is ok with me).
• Corona SDK - Lua (efficiency doubtful), also needs internet connection to compile code
• Cocos2d-x - C++, received lots of reviews from developers, mostly positive and many think it's best for 2D
• Particle code - Java+Eclipse, found no reviews or comments
• Moai - Lua, coudn't find any reviews/opinions on it
• Monkey engine - seems to have too few features
• Haxenme - it's Flash, I've never used it and don't want to
• use Unity3d but with 2D packages like 2D Toolkit
• ports of SDL to Android (also here) and iOS - doesn't look to have much support or current development (?)
• GLBasic - Basic language, I don't like it
• playN - seems to be early in development (?)
• Gamvas - HTML5, doesn't look like a mature engine to me
• Ignifuga - Python, also doesn't look mature
• ORX - not sure if it's still developed (?)
• Construct 2 - reminds GameMaker, might be ok for rapid prototypes but definitely not for industry-level games
• XNA and then port the game using ExEn (would need Mono Touch to port to iOS and Mono for Android to port to Android) - C#, and is probably more thought for folks coming from Microsoft products like xBox (I come from Android). Also, those Mono tools cost $800 in total for small developers
• Impact - JavaScript, uses HTML5. I'm not much into JavaScript (e.g. preferred C# on Unity3d), also not sure about efficiency since it runs in the browser (?)
• GameMaker - own scripting language GML and I actually remember this one as a tool for non-programmers. Has it actually grown into a real engine, I mean for serious development?
• AppGameKit - C++, yet seems to be still pretty new. Haven't found any reviews on it
• use Cocos2D and Objective C to develop for iOS only and then make an APK for Android out of it using Stella SDK. Has anyone done this? I'm pretty sure there will be limitations, and how about Google's in-app billing, AdMob and Facebook integration on Android?
• Moscrif - JavaScript, looks like it's more for former web-developers
• Starling - Flash 11, i'm not much into Flash
• ND2D - not yet 1.0, does it have many features?

So, I'd be happy if you could comment from your experiences with the engines and suggest which one in the list (or anything else that I've missed) is the best for the described requirements. I also may be wrong with my first impressions about some of the engines.

I'm currently thinking of Marmalade+IwGame as the best option but since I don't have much info about Cocos2d-x and Particle code, I am not really sure about it.

Thank you!

EDIT (June 2013): So far I made 2 cross-platform 2D games and used Unity3D with 2D Toolkit plugin for both. For the game with simple GUI I used a simple self-made GUI system based on Unity's own. For more complex one (e.g. where GUI elements can overlap) I used the NGUI plugin. Recently 2D Toolkit added some more classes for GUI which is very handy since one had to use 2 different systems for texture atlases when combining NGUI with 2D Toolkit. I'll definitely try that one in the next 2D game. The main reason for choosing Unity3D for 2D games was that I already was deep into Unity3D both in terms of experience and accumulated code snippets for re-use. Also, I purchased Unity3D pro (with Android Pro and iOS Pro) for 3D games and it made full sense to just pay additional $60 for the 2D Toolkit to get 2D games also covered. I so far don't regret my decision, it seems to have been optimal for my case. The only thing which gave me headache was adding social features with the Prime31's plugins (Android & iOS social plugins) but I assume that their bugs are not the fault of Prime31 but of Twitter/Facebook instead, so I probably would see the same bugs on any other engine or plugin.

EDIT (Jan 2014): I guess with Unity 4.3 the answer to my question is pretty obvious now: the Unity's new sprites system and maybe also 2DToolkit totally beat anything else, especially for people who have (like me) been on Unity for a while and purchased the Pro version with add-ons.

Lateen

and which one have u choosen? what about libgdx or andEngine, u din't even mentioned about them which i thought are the most populars – Mckeever

@Mckeever - He specified requirements that include a write one deploy twice (iOS and Android with option of Windows Phone a plus). andEngine is Android only and libgdx doesn't target iOS (nor Windows Phone), so they don't qualify. – Denouement

I ended up doing a 3d game with Unity3D and NGUI plugin for GUI. If I ever have to do a 2D game, I guess I'll just take Cocos2d-x and Marmelade – Lateen

judging from the website, i'm pretty sure libgdx supports iOS now. Still no windows phone though. – Lowman

how come you did not add the jMonkey engine? – Torchier

how come that extremely useful questions like this one are always closed as "off-topic"? maybe SO should create a separate platform for "information" and opinions – Bezonian

@BogdanAlexandru - I believe you can try http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com. Reading the help, it appears this question would be on-topic there. – Plaque

You need to add libGDX to the list, probably one of the best game development platforms i've ever used. – Wagtail

Moai was used by Too Many Snakes. See this reddit gamedev thread for why it took a year to finish. – Hanford

Answer 1

I've worked with Marmalade and I found it satisfying. Although it's not free and the developer community is also not large enough, but still you can handle most of the task using it's tutorials. (I'll write my tutorials once I got some times too).
IwGame is a good engine, developed by one of the Marmalade user. It's good for a basic game, but if you are looking for some serious advanced gaming stuff, you can also use Cocos2D-x with Marmalade. I've never used Cocos2D-x, but there's an Extension on Marmalade's Github.
Another good thing about Marmalade is it's EDK (Extension Development Kit), which lets you make an extension for whatever functionality you need which is available in native code, but not in Marmalade. I've used it to develop my own Customized Admob extension and a Facebook extension too.

Edit:
Marmalade now has it's own RAD(Rapid Application Development) tool just for 2D development, named as Marmalade Quick. Although the coding will be in Lua not in C++, but since it's built on top of C++ Marmalade, you can easily include a C++ library, and all other EDK extensions. Also the Cocos-2Dx and Box2D extensions are preincluded in the Quick. They recently launched it's Release version (It was in beta for 3-4 months). I think we you're really looking for only 2D development, you should give it a try.

Update:
Unity3D recently launched support for 2D games, which seems better than any other 2D game engine, due to it's GUI and Editor. Physics, sprite etc support is inbuilt. You can have a look on it.

Update 2
Marmalade is going to discontinue their SDK in favor of their in-house game production soon. So it won't be a wise decision to rely on that.

Sanches

You can also read this SO question too - https://mcmap.net/q/111045/-cocos2d-or-iwgame – Sanches

Thanks, looks like Marmalade with Cocos2D-x on top of it may indeed be the best option for my case. – Lateen

Forgetting [LibGDX][1] when this kind of question is rised is unforgivable!!! ;) [1]: libgdx.badlogicgames.com – Opt

Check the Updates :-) – Sanches

Unreal Engine 4.3.0 can be a contender too. It's C++ with editor and all. – Exportation

Answer 2

LibGDX is one of the best engines I've ever used, works on almost all platforms, and performs twice as fast as cocos2d-x in most tests I've done. You can use any JVM language you like. Here's a 13 part tutorial in Java, and here's a bunch using jruby. There's a good skeletal animation tool that works with it here, and it has baked in support for tiled TMX maps as well. The ui framework is awesome, and it has a scene graph and actor style API similar to cocos2d scenes, sprites and actions. The community is awesome, updates are frequent, and the documentation is good. Don't let the java part scare you, it's fast, and you can use jruby or scala or whatever you like. I highly recommend it for 2d or 3d work, it supports both.

Dianthus

Now LibGDX works with iOS too. But it costs ~400$ for Monotouch license :) – Physicalism

As of version 0.9.9 it uses RoboVM for iOS which is free – Revolutionize

I have worked with both LibGDX and cocos2dx extensively. And would say cocos2dx is much better (faster development + performance + tooling). If you are going android-only, its ok to use LibGDX other wise not! LibGDX's cross platform support is very-very bad, which depends on either RoboVM or Xamarin. Xamarin and RoboVM makes the compilation and execution both very slow on iOS. It eventually becomes very difficult to maintain. – Assent

Answer 3

You mention Haxe/NME but you seem to instinctively dislike it. However, my experience with it has been very positive. Sure, the API is a reimplementation of the Flash API, but you're not limited to targeting Flash, you can also compile to HTML5 or native Windows, Mac, iOS and Android apps. Haxe is a pleasant, modern language similar to Java or C#.

If you're interested, I've written a bit about my experience using Haxe/NME: link

Odonnell

Thanks, just from your article: "if you have a HTML5/Javascript (or Flash/ActionScript) game and you’d like to take it to Windows, iOS and beyond". I guess this engine is exactly for web developers who want to switch to mobile platforms. – Lateen

Haxe/NME is not a Game Engine, it's a platform that forms part of your technology stack. It's not for web developers who want to switch to mobile platforms. It's for game developers who want to take their games to as many platforms as possible without having to deal with inferior languages like JavaScript. HAXE/NME is very powerful but from the sound of things, I don't think it's what you were looking for. – Spermatic

Answer 4

V-Play (v-play.net) is a cross-platform game engine based on Qt/QML with many useful V-Play QML game components for handling multiple display resolutions & aspect ratios, animations, particles, physics, multi-touch, gestures, path finding and more. API reference The engine core is written in native C++, combined with the custom renderer, the games reach a solid performance of 60fps across all devices.

V-Play also comes with ready-to-use game templates for the most successful game genres like tower defense, platform games or puzzle games.

If you are curious about games made with V-Play, here is a quick selection of them:

• Squaby: a tower defense game
• Chicken Outbreak: a platformer like Doodle Jump
• Blockoban: puzzle game
• Crazy Elephant: a game similar to Angry Birds
• Snowball Mania: multiplayer action game
• Blitzkopf: brain game

(Disclaimer: I'm one of the guys behind V-Play)

Octal

Answer 5

Here is just a reply from Richard Pickup on LinkedIn to a similar question of mine:

I've used cocos 2dx marmalade and unity on both iOS and android. For 2d games cocos2dx is the way to go every time. Unity is just too much overkill for 2d games and as already stated marmalade is just a thin abstraction layer not really a game engine. You can even run cocos2d on top of marmalade. My approach would be to use cocos2dx on iOS and android then in future run cocosd2dx code on top of marmalade as an easy way to port to bb10 and win phone 7

Lateen

Answer 6

I find a nice and tidy Wave game engine few days ago. It uses C# and have Windows Phone and Windows Store converters as well which makes it a great replacement of XNA for me

Pullover

Answer 7

and what about LibGDX from BadLogicGames?

Opt

I didn't know libGDX runs on iOS. It requires a MonoDroid license, which is now (probably, I don't see the app being under 32kb of MSIL) $999 instead of $399 per year. – Overissue

Answer 8

Check out Loom (http://theengine.co) is a new cross platform 2D game engine featuring hot swapping code & assets on devices. This means that you can work in Photoshop on your assets, you can update your code, modify the UI of your app/game and then see the changes on your device(s) while the app is running.

Thinking to the other cross platform game engines I’ve heard of or even played with, the Loom Game Engine is by far the best in my oppinion with lots of great features. Most of the other similar game engines (Corona SDK, MOAI SDK, Gideros Mobile) are Lua based (with an odd syntax, at least for me). The Loom Game Engine uses LoomScripts, a scripting language inspired from ActionScript 3, with a couple of features borrowed from C#. If you ever developed in ActionScript 3, C# or Java, LoomScript will look familiar to you (and I’m more comfortable with this syntax than with Lua’s syntax).

The 1 year license for the Loom Game Engine costs $500, and I think it’s an affordable price for any indie game developer. Couple of weeks ago the offered a 1 year license for free too. After the license expires, you can still use Loom to create and deploy your own games, but you won’t get any further updates. The creators of Loom are very confident and they promised to constantly improve their baby making it worthwile to purchase another license.

Without further ado, here are Loom’s great features:

1. Cross platform (iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, Linux/Ubuntu)

2. Rails-inspired workflow lets you spend your time working with your game (one command to create a new project, and another command to run it)

3. Fast compiler

4. Live code and assets editing

5. Possibility to integrate third party libraries

6. Uses Cocos2DX for rendering

7. XML, JSON support

8. LML (markup language) and CSS for styling UI elements

9. UI library

10. Dependency injection

11. Unit test framework

12. Chipmunk physics

13. Seeing your changes live makes multidevice development easy

14. Small download size

15. Built for teams

You can find more videos about Loom here: http://www.youtube.com/user/LoomEngine?feature=watch

Check out this 4 part in-depth tutorial too: http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2013/02/28/A-closer-look-at-the-Loom-game-engine-Part-one-getting-started.aspx

Cobol

Answer 9

I've tried AppGameKit, It's both c++ and Basic. It's very easy to code 2d games in the Basic varient, with physics, collision and heaps more. It's also in active development, and really cheap (65$). The main problem is that it's really hard to compile for Android (you need to download heaps of files and follow difficult guides and things like that) My opinion is that it isn't yet good enough for commercial use, but is good for indie programmers It's got a medium size community

Balkhash

Answer 10

I currently use Corona for business applications with great success. As far as games go, I'm under the impression that it doesn't provide the performance that some of the other cross-platform development engines do. It is worth noting that Carlos (founder of Ansca Mobile/Corona SDK) has started another company on a competing engine; Lanica Platino Engine for Appcelerator Titanium. While I haven't worked with this personally, it does look promising. Keep in mind, however, that it comes with a $999/yr price tag.

All that said, I have been researching Moai for a little while now (since I am already familiar with Lua syntax) and it does seem promising. The fact that it can compile for multiple platforms, not limited to mobile environments, is appealing.

Multimedia Fusion 2 is also a worth contender, considering the complexity of games produced and the performance realized from them. Vincere Totus Astrum (http://gamesare.com) comes to mind.

Rules

Answer 11

Recently I used an AS3 engine: PushButton (now is dead, but it's still functional and you could use something else) to do this job. To make it works with Android and iOS, the project was compiled in AIR for both platforms and everything worked with no performance damage. Since Flash Builder is kinda expensive ($249), you could use FlashDevelop (there is some tutorials to compile in AIR with it).

Flash could be an option since is very easy to learn.

Chekhov