Cocos2d-x for desktops (Win, Mac, Linux) and performance

Question

Mobile development

Hello!

Cocos2d-x is a great platform for C++ game development. Surely there are people on Habré who use Cocos2d-x.

The question is:
1) Does Cocos2d-x on Windows still use OpenGL emulation to work? (In the past, this was the case, but no updated information could be found).
How is coconut doing with performance on macOS? linux?

2) Does it make sense to make a game on coconut, originally sharpened for desktop computers? And this is only because someday they are planned to be ported to mobile platforms.
Or will the code still need to be changed a lot? How easy is it to port code from platform to platform and vice versa?

If anyone has a similar experience, please share.

Answer 1

1. cocos2d-x under Windows uses GLEW, working directly with OpenGL (see cocos2dx\platform\third_party\win32\OGLES\GL).
I don’t know about other PC platforms, but under Linux everything should be fine (the same GLEW library is used).
2. There is a sense. Porting from Windows to Android is quite simple: the project is compiled with the Android NDK and a Java wrapper clings on top of it. Nothing had to be changed. As for other mobile platforms, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s too difficult either.

Answer 2

2. You only immediately make support for different monitor resolutions. If the touch interface can still be screwed up later, then the resolution is not so simple. From 480x320 to 2048x1536 and 2560x1600. To make the graphics look clear everywhere. Also take into account the weak capabilities of mobile hardware - some cool effects will have to be simplified or completely disabled, there are also restrictions on RAM and the maximum size of loaded textures.
If you keep all this in mind when writing the game, then porting will be painless.
You can also look in the direction of the Moai SDK - also free and cross-platform, Double Fine Adventure and Shadowrun Returns are made on it.

Answer 3

The beneficial advantages of cocos2d-x turned out to be:
- open source
- MIT License - change whatever you want and suitable for commercial use
- compared to competitors (even paid ones), it turned out to be not so raw,
regularly rewritten and supplemented + quite an extensive community, to which the community of obj-c-shny cocos2d adjoins
- C ++ - it is easy to supplement with third-party and self-written libs, with the right architecture, your code base can exist without coco, in which case you can transfer to another engine (unlike, for example, paid and mega-promoted Unity)
In terms of cross-platform, I'm still satisfied with the combination of iOS + Windows.
It is very convenient to develop on a mature Windows in a normal visual studio and then simply recompile it in x-code for iOS.
Regarding desktop computers, I think we should immediately aim at the tablet / telephone market from the very beginning.