When comparing Roblox 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 3D game engines?” Cocos2d-x and Cocos Creator is ranked 21st while Roblox is ranked 23rd. 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 Enjoy creating and playing your own game or thousands of other games available
You can create your own original game and play it, and have others play your game too. As of 2017, Roblox has over 500,000 game creators designing games. That's a lot of games made by players like you, so you'll never run out of options on what to play.
Pro Gives more flexibility when it comes to building
Since creations are not limited to cubes, you are given more choices. Players can fully customize the size of the blocks, and make wedges and hills that are not cube-like.
Pro The game is free to play
You'll be able to create your own games and play without paying for anything. Though they do have virtual currency that they call Robux, which you have to buy with real cash. You only have to do so if you want to upgrade the look of your avatar or get optional in-game power-ups. Like with most games, if you have the patience you can additional items over time, then you don't have to spend a dime.
Pro Offers a safe chat mode for kids under 13 and a parent's login
Since Roblox is used mostly by younger players, a primary concern for parents when it comes to interactive and multi-player online games have always been the safety of their children from online predators and inappropriate behavior. Roblox has this covered with their safe chat mode, and a parent can also monitor their child's activity and account settings.
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();
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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 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.