LibGDX vs Cocos2dx For Developing Android Games

Question

I need to know how LibGDX compares to Cocos2dx for the android platform. Yes, portability is a goal, but so is quality, ease of use and frame rates.

Humperdinck

Stackoverflow is not a "which engine is better?" platform. If you have to ask this kind of question, my answer is always "it doesn't matter to you - start writing code!". Read this: learn-cocos2d.com/2012/05/… – Lissie

First off its more specific than that. Its comparing two particular game engines on a particular platform. Not which engine is better in general. And no the opinion of a single individual on this is not as good as the shared opinion of several people. – Humperdinck

Another equally relevent question is what have you done to bring cocos2dx to Android? And why your article does nothing to discuss the strategy for multiple platforms ..... – Humperdinck

I ended up going with LibGDX for Android and SpriteKit for iOS as it was easier for me to figure out. Best of luck. – Ink

Answer 1

Well this does obviously hugely depend on what you are after. Libgdx and Cocos2d have very different APIs. So I do actually recommend you just check them both out and pick what is best for you in the end. Personally I dislike the Cocos2d API. Libgdx is much more low-level and allows you to completely decouple the rendering logic from your game logic.

Libgdx is written in Java over C++. However, the performance critical parts are written in native code to execute at optimum speed. I've personally looked at a lot of frameworks out there and haven't found anything that performs as good as libgdx. Development also becomes really fast with hot code swapping, which will allow you to run and change code in your game without having to recompile. Libdgx also lets you deploy to HTML5 without needing to rewrite anything. iOS backend is WIP. So if iOS is first priority for you, you'll need to wait until libgdx supports that.

By far the biggest benefit of using libgdx is the hugely helpful community driving it. You will get answers very quickly as well as help from the developers themselves.

Needless to say, I'm an avid supporter of libgdx.

Hallelujah

Do you have a guess as to when iOS support might be arriving? – Humperdinck

It looks like most of the basics are in place but a few things like audio are still not done. As to an ETA, impossible to say :/ – Hallelujah

Answer 2

First of all libGDX is just a game-development application framework and use many third party libraries like box2d and lightweight java game library. also for newbie it is totally hazardous to configure it on eclipse. Its deployment only limited to Windows,Linux,Mac OS X,Android, iOS, and web browsers(webgl support)

• it support deployment in Windows,Linux,Mac OS X,Android, iOS, and web browsers(webgl support)
• Uses third party IDE

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while on other hand cocos-2d is open source and not just limited to game development but also support apps and other Gui based interactive programs. Its also ships many cousin libraries like Cocos2d-SpriteBuilder, Cocos2d-x, Cocos2d-html5 and Cocos2d-XNA which can be very helpful for spritesheet editing,particle editing etc. one of the main advantage of cocos2d is that it uses its own IDE CocoStudio which can be very beneficial and time shaving.

• its support deployment in windows,MAC OS X, Linux,android,Windows Phone 7 & 8, Windows 7 & 8, Xbox 360.
• It use its own IDE Cocostudio
• open source

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