This repository is a collection of Breakout clones written in four of today's popular cross-platform game engines. It began as preparation for a blog post published on Binpress called Selecting a Cross-platform Game Engine.
In order to accurately compare and contrast the game engines, I wrote a Breakout clone from scratch using each game engine. I then re-wrote the clones using RapidGame templates in order to estimate how much development time RapidGame can save.
You will find the original Breakout clones in the Control
directory. The clones built with RapidGame are in the Rapid
directory.
I found that some cross-platform game engines are inherently more rapid than others. Corona, for example, is built for speed. Cocos2D JS can be quick too if you prebuild the libraries statically.
I found that project setup, getting the viewport right, setting up physics and other grunt work tasks can take up to ~80% of development time for simple games like a Breakout clone. Using RapidGame can eliminate most of that time sink.
In order to run the Breakout clones:
- Clone this repo
- Install RapidGame:
sudo npm install rapidgame -g
- Initialize the Rapid/Cocos2d project:
cd BreakoutClones/Rapid/Cocos2d && rapidgame init .
- Run the prebuild:
rapidgame prebuild
- Initialize the Control/Cocos2d project:
cd BreakoutClones/Control/Cocos2d && rm cocos2d-js && ln -s ~/path/to/cocos2d-js-v3.0-alpha2 cocos2d-js