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Cocos2D-X vs Unity: What are the differences?
## Introduction
Both Cocos2D-X and Unity are popular game development engines that offer various features and capabilities for game development.
1. **Programming Language**: Cocos2D-X uses C++ as its primary programming language, providing more control and efficiency in coding, while Unity uses C# which is more beginner-friendly and has a larger community support.
2. **Platform Support**: Cocos2D-X supports more platforms including iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux, whereas Unity supports a wide range of platforms including mobile, desktop, consoles, and web.
3. **3D Capabilities**: Unity is known for its robust 3D game development capabilities, offering better tools and workflows for creating 3D games compared to Cocos2D-X which is focused more on 2D game development.
4. **Visual Editor**: Unity provides a powerful visual editor that allows developers to create games without writing much code, while Cocos2D-X relies more on coding for game development tasks.
5. **Pricing Model**: Unity offers a free version with limited features along with paid plans, while Cocos2D-X is open-source and free to use without any licensing costs.
6. **Community Support**: Unity has a larger and more active community with extensive documentation, forums, and tutorials available, making it easier for developers to find help and resources.
In Summary, Cocos2D-X and Unity differ in programming language, platform support, 3D capabilities, visual editor, pricing model, and community support.
When I started to learn game development, I've tried to use Unity multiple times because it's the most popular option. But never get it worked because of the clunky UI which is very hard to understand for a new user. After some time, I've decided to try UE4 despite there was a lot of rumors that it's "heavy" or requires an AAA team. And suddenly it clicked, everything works as I expecting, UI is clear and much more powerfull, no need to build custom tools to work on the game itself. Blueprints are very helpful for beginners, C++ has a lot of "syntax-sugar" - macroses, a lot of convenient in-engine types for everything. Later while working with Unreal, I've realized it has very consistent roadmap with constant improvements and adding new features. At the same time, each major version update is painless so you can upgrade your project during development to get new features. UE4 is free to use with the full list of features and you only have to pay royalty after getting your first $1 million from the project (and that's just the default case, you can always discuss custom license with an upfront fee, if you want to).
I chose Unity over Unreal Engine because Unity has a more user friendly UI for beginners looking to learn game development. Additionally, as someone who uses a lot of online resources to learn new languages and tools, I found a lot of tutorials covering game development with Unity as the core engine. This doesn't mean Unreal is not a great choice for game development, I just personally found learning game development much smoother with the amount of resources available with Unity.
Pros of Cocos2D-X
Pros of Unity
- Because it's a powerful engine, you can build anything16
- C# language14
- Very Popular11
- Easy to Use7
- He Has A Free VErsion6
- Cross Platform6
- 2nd Game Engine In The World5
- Good Choise4
- Very Large Showcase4
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Cons of Cocos2D-X
- Popular only in Asia2
- Based on Chinese2
- No Multiple Languages1
- Not Popular in itch.io and in Steam1
- Very poor system1
- No GUI1
- Bad Windows Performance1
Cons of Unity
- Hard to get started with4
- Clunky UI4
- Closed source4
- No consistency with updates3
- Requires to build a lot of tools3
- Gigantic by being 9gb (thats what setup says)2
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What is Cocos2D-X?
What is Unity?
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