Cocoonjs?

[dbawel]

Can someone share their experience(s) with cocoonjs?  I'm not fond of proprietary software and APIs, but I'd like to learn more about Ludei.

 

Thanks.

[JCPalmer]

CocoonJS is for wrapping your html5, primarily canvases, into something for the iOS, Android, & Amazon app stores.  If you just want run on a mobile browser, then no need to read any further.

 

Biggest advantages for making an app & cocoon:

• All the downloading is done when the app is installed.  Think 30mb after zipping is the free account limit for game code / resources.  I am going with as much inline code as possible.  It comes up pretty fast.  You might still be able to grab a .babylon off the net once the app is built, but I would pack all the high priority stuff in the app.
• Cocoon can also run native code from Javascript.  See Apache Cordova.  Do not think you can call native code from a browser.  Part of their API does native calls for things like front or rear camera access.  You do not have to know how either iOS or Android do it.
• Development is eased, because there is a launcher App for CocoonJS at those 3 app stores.  This means run your app as you develop it inside of the launcher.  The launcher just wants a url.  I just put a http server, (Jetty since I have done a lot of Java), on my desktop.  Both are on my wifi, so I enter http://192.168.1.1xx:8080/mygame.html.  It saves it, so you only have to do it once.
• When you are done, you submit your stuff to their server & it returns everything packaged up for each platform.  I have not done this, but probably should just to see how it works.
• You still need Android & iOS developer accounts.  You also still need to digitally sign the android app after you get it back.  There is probably iOS stuff that cannot be done by them.

I have used the forum a number of times.  Babylon 1.14 did not really work on it.  I submitted something to them about it.  It took quite a while for the response, but they did pinpoint the problem.  I PRed a fix for BJS 2.0, and improved it for 2.1.  Since then, Marta has responded to my stuff fairly quickly.

 

This part may change soon, so I am not going to put a lot of effort into.  They have 3 ways of running:

• Their own VM, called Canvas+.
• The platforms VM
• Both at the same time.  Confusing yes.

[dbawel]

Hi Jeff,

 

That tells me about all I need to know concerning cocoonjs.  It might be valuable for developers to create sellable products, but not for the work I'm currently doing.  Thanks for all of the info and advice.

 

Cheers,

 

DB