When comparing Gideros vs Cocos2d-x and Cocos Creator, the Slant community recommends Cocos2d-x and Cocos Creator for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Cocos2d-x and Cocos Creator is ranked 10th while Gideros is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose Cocos2d-x and Cocos Creator is:
25% of iPhone games are made using Cocos2d-x. This means you will not be alone in development, and will have access to a large community. You'll know you are developing for an engine that works.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Instant on device testing
Gideros provides on device players for iOS and Android that can be used to instantly try out your code directly from the Gideros IDE.
Pro Auto scaling and image resolutions
Gideros provides an easy way to target various screen sizes by providing automatic scaling options and choosing the best image resolution based on device screen automatically
Pro Local builds
You can build apps without an online dependency.
Pro Friendly & helpful community
Gideros has an active forum where you can find friendly and helpful advice.
Pro New features and improvements are released regularly
Gideros is being constantly updated and improved by the main developers.
Pro All in one studio, no complicated setup
Gideros Studio is incredibly easy to set up. Once installed it is very easy to create a new project or open one of the many example projects. Trying out an example on the desktop is two clicks away.
Pro Easy plugin architecture
Gideros Studio has a very powerful feature which enables developers to use a C/C++/Java/ObjC library next to Lua. This way it's possible to call the library functions under Lua, get the results and interpret them directly under Gideros Studio.
Pro Supports many platforms
Gideros supports iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, WindowsRT, Windows Phone and HTML5 platforms.
Pro Amazing 2D performance
2D performance is amazing.
Pro Very easy to learn
Gideros uses the Lua programming language which is very easy to learn (and very powerful). There are some excellent video tutorials too, to help you get started. The Gideros forum community are also very friendly and helpful if you any any problems.
Pro A proven engine for mobile development
25% of iPhone games are made using Cocos2d-x.
This means you will not be alone in development, and will have access to a large community. You'll know you are developing for an engine that works.
Pro Good documentation
Documentation includes a programming guide, API reference, video tutorials and massive reference test code project showing all functions and giving working code to the user.
Pro Supports 3D models with skeleton animation
A new feature since Cocos2d-x v3.1 is support for 3D models (in your 2D game), not only this but support for skeleton animations is included too! This awesome feature allows for impressive characters in your game along with easier, more fluid and realistic animations.
Pro Great script language support
It supports Lua and Javascript with full feature support.
Especially with Cocos2d-JS you can develop games cross web and native, and the native solution have great performance with JS Bindings, much better than hybrid solution.
Pro Highly active community for questions and support
Cocos2d-x forums are active.
Pro OpenGL hardware acceleration
Pro Future-proof
Cocos2d-x is not only open source but also supported by Chukong Technologies of China and USA.
Regularly updated and adding support for the latest technologies. 2014 has already seen the release of Version 3, a new Cocos Studio development toolkit (optional) and support for new technologies like skeleton animation systems Spine and Adobe DragonBone.
Pro Greater performance than high level APIs
Cocos2d-x is C++ based engine and it has CPU advantages for most platforms because of that. It uses polygonal mesh methods for sprite rendering for using GPU advantages. (You also use quad methods for benefit CPU).
Pro No external dependencies
Because it is based on Pyglet.
Pro One code for all platforms
On top of supporting pretty much all existing platforms (except consoles), Cocos Creator (Cocos's IDE) allows you to write 1 code that runs on Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS and HTML5 (not Linux though).
Pro Easy integration of 3rd party plugins
Through the use of SDKBox you can easily integrate 3rd party SDKs and plugins for each version of Cocos2D (Lua, C++ or JavaScript), you just choose the SDKs to integrate and SDKBox will do the rest.
For example, if you want to add a rating plugin, you use sdkbox::PluginReview::init();
and if you want to add the Vundle Ad Network SDK, you use the one packaged in SDKBox SDKBOX sdkbox::PluginVungle::init();
.
Pro Allows for easy debugging
It has a built-in Python interpreter that allows for easy debugging.
Pro Very good IDE
Cocos Creator (Cocos' IDE) comes with scene editing, UI editor, animations & particle editors and whatnot. It's also easy to use and pretty intuitive if you read the official documentation & tutorials. Way way better than the old CocoStudio.
Pro Great video tutorials
Hundreds of video tutorials available.
Cons
Con Few resources, but growing
Gideros has a small community, and therefore do not have as many "How to make a game" tutorials. However, there are a couple of excellent books available that can take you through the fundamentals.
Con The Gideros IDE is not as fully featured as other IDEs
The Gideros IDE is not as fully featured as other IDEs, but you can easily use the very powerful and compatible ZeroBrane Studio IDE.
Con Poor support and non-existent community
Up until 2013, this was one of the best engines around. However, since then it was bought by a Chinese company and began stagnating - it's virtually in a slow death. Most developers abandoned Cocos in favor of more modern solutions leaving the community weak and the forums with little or no traffic. Although the Cocos2d-x Forum seems to have a decent community going.
Con No Graphics user interface
Con Modest functionality
Almost all free alternatives are more convenient, faster, and more functional.