yea i understand to some extent, Ashley wanting to be neutral but then if they don't want to officially support some particular platform / technology they should diminish the affected platforms as viable..

Because what people basically bitch about is "well i already paid for C2.. why should i need to pay for anything else?" and they are right if their under the impression that C2 CAN reach a given platform.. other game engines like GameSalad and others have an incorporated pipeline which means it WILL work for those platforms though it might also inherit some limitations as well.

I think C2 got burned by Cocoon.JS because of various reasons.. and probably don't want to be burned again.. I get it.. but people will learn (and be unhappy) eventually that C2 to iPhone/Android is difficult through most options.. especially if they want to make money with their game.. and i think it's fair to say most C2 developers think their game is going to make money.. but it's the same story over and over.. people make their game with C2 quickly.. then spend many times that much time trying to figure out how to publish the game.

Cocoon IO is by far the smoothest path and I hope no one wastes any more time trying to fight with XDK like I have and other developers I know who are using Cocoon IO now.

I haven't run into any problems, but my use of physics is pretty light. That said whatever the issue is I'm sure it can and will be fixed if enough people report it.

UPDATED: When I first posted this I was dealing with a lot of really stupid problems with XDK. Project crippling plugin issues and other nonsense. When I found Cocoon IO at the time it was working so much better for me than XDK that I wanted everyone to know about it... however since this post awhile back, I currently feel that this is no longer accurate. It is still a good platform but basically depending on your game needs and such or problems you may face, be sure you consider cocoon io if XDK is giving you trouble. At this point they are both good. Both have pros and cons but ultimately both (though things change constantly with software updates / OS updates / plugins,etc) are working hard to be better and its a good idea to familiarize yourself with both of them and then use which ever one you like better till it doesn't do what you need well enough..

------- Rant begins -------

Listen everyone, I know I'm not the only one who's had more than one nightmarish experience with cordova / xdk / phonegap publishing with cranberry plugins not working with a particular version of construct 2 or xdk.. you get build errors.. no idea why? spending hours trying to find the answer yourself or with others..

I have found the solution and so has Volkan.. Cocoon IO!

I was reluctant to get into it.. I was comfortable with XDK and even if it kept mucking up the time.. I did have some successes with it.. but those successes eventually were becoming an unacceptable % of the time i was spending.. to the point where it was looking like Construct 2 was becoming unviable for mobile game development... at least for anyone beyond a hobbyist or people who didn't need to rely on any 3rd party services.

So some people bitch about some stuff.. I'm going to tackle a few of those weak arguments:

But Caleb, they want $500 to remove a splash screen!

this is optional! you don't have to pay $500 to use the service and make a game. you just see a little short splash screen before your game loads. If you think this is unfair.. EVERY unity user who uses the free tools has this and guess how much it would cost to own the software to not have a splash screen with unity.. if you want iOS and Android it would cost you $4500 and ONLY $3000 if you just do iOS or Android.. a steal!

I don't want to have to learn another complicated publishing process

It's not! yes it's a little different than XDK/Phonegap, but it's MUCH easier to manage plugins! OMG once you get in there you'll know what I'm talking about

I love having to make 12 different specific icon sizes with each new project I make in XDK.

Well I love uploading a single 1024x1024 image and let them deal with all of them for me.. seriously.. you might cry a little when you realize you can do it once and just see icons in your builds regardless of device you publish on..

I still have a bad taste in my mouth from Cocoon.JS

I personally never went too far down that road, but I know people were having trouble with it in various ways. It's improved remarkably since then. The fact that they brought in Cordova plugin support is a game changer. This means you're no longer reliant on either Cocoon IO OR Ashley to make working plugins. Cordova offers a 3rd party solution and it works!

I want to use Cranberry / Cordova plugins

You can! That was the big improvement with "IO". They included Cordova plugin support! I have spent seriously.. MONTHS trying to get ALL the plugins I need working with XDK and without fail something would always fuck up and leave me with an almost working game.. in the matter of a couple of weeks of learning / testing XDK I now have IAP, Vungle, Admob and Social Sharing working. I used the native Cocoon IO IAP plugin and Ads.. but Social Sharing and Vungle (from Cranberry) worked just fine.

Cocoon IO has actual Construct 2 plugins created specifically to help use Cocoon IO services directly

Seriously, unlike cranberry plugins which are a wild west of support / breaking SDK versions where these are actively supported plugins by humans who respond to your posts on the Cocoon IO forum to help developers with problems.

Crosswalk is so awesome. I love it's performance and how big it bloats my games

Well I can't help you there. If you use Cocoon IO for Android it is 2mb + your game.. Crosswalk is 19mb + your game.. I had a game i made with crosswalk that was 28mb.. when i moved the same game over to Cocoon IO it came out 13mb.. and great performance.

These greedy Cocoon IO guys actually want me to pay money for their work!

They have a free plan and then have several tier plans (i'm going to be going with Silver myself this week because my time is more valuable than using a free tool that has sapped so much energy from me) but you don't have to pay them one red cent to publish your games. The other tiers off higher priority on compiling, but in my experience the free tier takes about as long as XDK ever took to do their compiles.

Why am I posting this? Because I'd like to see more people in the Cocoon IO forums posting their problems and solutions. Cocoon IO isn't without some getting used too, but I've found that the blockers I hit are able to be moved around without much trouble.. unlike the hair pulling frustration I and others I know have faced..

this tutorial will get you far. you may hit a few other little things along the way, but seriously don't jump ahead.. take your time. start with a hello world project. don't try to pull your completed game over starting out.. if you start simple you'll bring your game over..

https://shatter-box.com/knowledgebase/cocoonio-how-to-build-a-game-using-construct-2/

also Andy made a book download for $3.. Andy has been incredibly helpful and he's part of the Cocoon IO team. Buy this book if nothing else but a way of saying thank you for helping Construct 2 developers out. https://www.scirra.com/store/ebooks/quick-starter-ebook-1893

If you have questions post them on the cocoon io forum and i'll try to help where I can as well. I hope to see more/all of you sharing your successes with Cocoon IO very soon. I have a couple of games coming out soon.. it's actually nice to go back to fixing actual in-game bugs again rather than chasing down plugin errors and compile problems... Cocoon IO can give you errors too but believe me if you pace yourself, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Update: I did get IAP working. There is a template capx for IAP out there you can get. This file shows how to setup IAP. It was slightly different than how I had done it using the cranberry IAP plugin for cordova. Also don't let the complexity of the demo overwhelm you. Really just pay attention to the variable usage in it. Functions are not needed for it to work.

usman Haq thanks yea i've had some help there, but it seems to be a modest community at best so far. I'd love to see more people use it and get involved so we can share knowledge. I know we have some guys like ArcadEd who are advanced users who advocate it.

So far the replies I have gotten are from a Cocoon IO developer (which is awesome, don't get me wrong) but yea I'd love to know that there are other actual developers who have published games that use all of the core features (to me) such as:

• sharing
• IAP
• Banner ads
• Rewarded Videos

I'm happy to report I have seen all of these work for both iOS and Android except IAP.

I'll check those products out. the price is certainly reasonable. I'll let you all know how useful the products are.

Thanks,

Caleb

bump..

NOTE I did find out the fix to the error is using the canvas+ plugin and putting "is canvas+" condition in a given area that has an IAP event. Although I did find that also introduced some bugs in browser because if it's in a condition event, you're playing a game that is not "canvas+" because you're on a computer browser thus the conditions are not met to proceed.. still working on an elegant / repeatable solution.

However overall IAP are not working. I'm getting a store issue like it's trying to pull stuff from the store but having trouble with it. i know i'm pointing reference names to the right IAP I have set up.. has anyone come across this? "Store: An error occured while fetching the products from the store"

Are you guys using IAP in your game with Cocoon IO? I'm having trouble getting even the example CAPX file to work (get a store error) when i run the game.

These are pretty recent posts. I haven't run into the black screen issue yet, but i'm mostly focused on iOS right now. So I should be specific about that too.

Has anyone found their letterbox games appearing as left aligned rather than centered?

I'm really liking it so far. I got admob working, vungle (cordova plugin), google analytics and social share.. which has already allowed me to get more done than i could ever get with XDK which seems to always be breaking somewhere.. be it the plugin, c2 or xdk itself needing updates..

Hi everyone,

I've been using Cocoon IO over the last week and found it VERY refreshing from the XDK/Cordova hell I was in.

That said I've hit a few snags and wonder if anyone else has been able to use things like IAP with Cocoon IO?

I have had some success with cordova plugins as well. I've seen just about everything work in one build or another except IAP.

I could really use a Cocoon IO experienced person to team up with and try things. I can't help but feel like there are just little tricks.

Thanks,

Caleb

I could use some help or even some confirmation that you have been able to successfully publish a game with working IAP. I'm not getting any results and it's hard to tell if it's even talking to itunes or not..

Are people using this plugin for Cocoon IO or maybe still using the cranberry plugin? I had some issues with that at the time, but maybe i need to try that more?

Also has anyone run into a problem where the native cocoon io IAP plugin (what i'm using) gives an error when try to preview with any browser, but if i remove the IAP plugin the error goes away.

bump..

let me tell you if you haven't tried out cocoon IO.. and your finding trouble making XDK / Phonegap work.. seriously look into it. I've wasted soooo much time with plugin problems and errors.. CIO has given me faster results AND compared to crosswalk.. the size of the game is 2mb + your game vs crosswalk which is 19mb + your game.. I know a lot of people here favor android so seriously.. check it out..

LittleStain thanks for this. I'll try it out. I've been working in Cocoon IO lately to get a couple of projects wrapped up so I hadn't had a chance to test this out.

Thanks!

Caleb

Hi everyone,

So first of all, I'm seeing some REALLY promising results with Cocoon IO. I'm loving it. Making much much faster progress seeing things work than XDK. Anywho, my issue is that I've noticed that normally a letterbox scale game is centered and has nice black bars outside the state.

With Cocoon IO it seems that if i view a letterbox game on say.. an iPhone 4s.. it's left aligned and the empty space inherits the background color of the layout.

Dealing with the color isn't a big deal but the alignment thing would be much nicer if it were centered. Does anyone know how this could be achieved?

Thanks,

Caleb