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Comment by ronyeh | Hacker News Reader

Tiny Piano was actually my 5th app that I published on the App Store. It turns out that I needed to ship four duds before I happened on a successful app. I also built a few game prototypes that never made it to market.

I first tried cocos2d, probably the most popular 2d game framework for iOS. I built two prototypes with it... but struggled to get either app to a state where I was happy with shipping.

Then, I happened across Sparrow. I realized its architecture was very similar to ActionScript 3. In my previous life, I had built a lot of stuff in Flash. So, I was able to build apps much faster once I found Sparrow.

Recently, I've been keeping my eye on MOAI, which allows you to publish games to both Android and iOS. I might built future games with MOAI.

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Can you be more specific about your struggles w/Cocos2d? Were you simply more comfortable w/the similar concepts and naming schemes for Sparrow and AS3? Thanks!

In short, I was simply more comfortable with Sparrow.

I think it was a combination of a bunch of factors. I was learning iOS development at the same time as I was learning cocos2d, all while brainstorming and hacking on my first ever mobile app. Thus, every time I couldn't remember / figure out how to do touch handling, or place a sprite at the correct location, etc... I blamed it on cocos2d. :-D Of course, cocos2d is a fine toolkit. Just see how many games people have developed with it!

Before doing iOS development, I had spent my 2.5 previous years doing AS3/JS development. Before that, I spent ~6 yrs doing Java development. Sparrow happened to match my mental model of how graphics, event handlers / touch handling, and animation worked.

So if you have a similar background to me, then do give Sparrow a try!

Appreciate the candid feedback. Good luck in your future iOS endeavors!

I'm a MOAI developer, and I can tell you: USE IT! Its freakin' awesome. ;)

Do you have a game in the store that I can look at? As far as I can tell, most of the games in the store are from larger teams... and that worries me.

I want a toolkit that is super easy for one person to work with. I even considered going to Corona at some point, but I am a fan of open source SDKs, so MOAI caught my eye.

I might also take a look at Starling (http://gamua.com/starling/) from the same developer as Sparrow. It allows you to write in AS3 and publish to Android and iOS and Web/Flash.

Believe it or not, I've been using MOAI to do non-game apps - i.e. utility apps. I've done one game with it - a Lottery ball physics game - and it was very, very fun. I don't think you should shy away from MOAI because of the perception that it takes a team to make the game - well, as long as you can find some way to get content made - i.e. graphics, bitmaps, etc.

Would you mind sharing a link to some of your moai utility apps? I'm always interested to see what others have done. :-D My sparrow/cocos2d apps (duds included) are here: http://itunes.apple.com/artist/id431782728

I'm not particularly satisfied with this app (not my design - its quite conservative), but it works and is a MOAI app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.allaboutapp...

I'm working on two more titles that will be in the store soon that will be a bit more games-like ..

Have you considered HaXe? (Also similar to ActionScript 3)

I ran across HaXe while I was in grad school, and tried it out back then in 2006. I haven't tried HaXe recently.

I just did searches for 2d game toolkits... and I happened to find Sparrow. It was completely open source, and a very clean/simple toolkit, so I liked it immediately.

I'm still looking for a simple/clean/open source JavaScript game toolkit that allows me to deploy to Android + iOS. That would be my dream come true, I think.

Would a JavaScript toolkit run games in the browser, or as a native app?

I would love if the JS toolkit ran games as a native app.

This is the closest one I have found: http://impactjs.com/

I hope that future smart phone OS developers allow us indie devs to use JS to make native games. I personally don't truly care if the API is or isn't compatible with HTML5/canvas. As long as it is in JS, I'll be happy. :-)

I actually have gotten used to Objective C, so I don't mind using it. But I feel like there are a lot of JS developers out there who would like to build mobile games. Why make them learn something new?

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