Cocos2d-x is a great foundation for creating crossplatform games. But Unity and Unreal are heavily requested from companies when applying for jobs. Depends if you want to creating indie games or get a job in an established company. Cocos2d-x will still be valuable.

Hey there, thank you for the response. Indie games are def what I am after. I have had some time with SpriteKit, Cocos2d-x and Unity. They are very different in approach and language. I can afford the monthly license for the pro edition of Unity, but this does not equal the best solution nessecerily. The biggest issue I can see with cocos2d-x is the apparent inability to be used on PC, Linux, PS and XBOX, and the potential downfalls of using c++  and garbage collection (I know this is an issue, but is it a big one with 2D type games?). Unity feels very bloated. Every build takes minutes to ages, and there are always piles of errors to work through. Also, the IDE is very click and drag… like MS Word for game development. I am not sure I am getting the best learning experience from it. SpriteKit is a limit in terms of learning and cross platform work. 

Is cocos2d-x going to receive ongoing updates and support? Or do you guys think it is potentially at risk of becoming abandonware?

Cocos2d-x is being activily developed by Chukong so it won’t become abandonware. Cocos2d-x supports PC and Linux. PS and XBOX support it coming so for indie definitely use Cocos2d-x.

I stumbled upon this thread while browsing around on what’s new in sonarframework for cocos2d-x. 

I have been working in game development quite sometime now and been using cocos2d-x from the early days of version 2.0.

More and more companies are adapting to Unity than Cocos2d-x. That means my pay is quite high :P 
But that also mean getting into company that is using Cocos2d-x is also shrinking, less opportunity to get in.

That aside, I agree with you, not all solutions need to use Unity, we used to take a month to do a prototype in all available engines out there and still stick with cocos2d-x because the freedom to expand the functionalities to fit our needs.

I would say, cocos2d-x is fun to work with if you like to get your hand dirty, to get to know how things work. For very simple games, version 3 would be a breeze to use whether or not you are using their creator or just plain old coding.

I do mean it by getting your hand dirty, you will stumble a lot and tweak a lot if lets say that you choose to incorporate external libraries to your game, you dont want to invent the wheel, using libraries speed up development in various ways. BUT you have to deal with not just Objective-C, you also need to know how to handle it in Java if you want iOS and Android games.

The best thing is, if something in Cocos2d-x is not to your liking, then feel free to enhance it, make a new class out of existing Cocos2d-x class and change it to your heart content.

Cocos2d-x is actively developed and we will get constant updates, be sure to go through the changes log or take a look at the official repository before upgrading. I have learned the lesson the hard way.

There are other 2D game engines beside Unity and Cocos2d-x, it is all depend on what type of games and gameplay. I’m not saying to stay away from Coco2d-x but if all above sounds enticing to you, by all mean DO IT! (insert LaBeouf gif here).

Thank you for this input.

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