Creator support for Cocos2d-x

Limitations

Given that Creator uses a component based model to create its objects, and cocos2d-x has its monolithic structure, it is only possible to support a limited subset of Creator features.

Supported nodes:

• Scene
• Sprite
• Canvas (but only one per scene)
• ScrollView
• Label
• EditBox
• ParticleSystem
• TiledMap
• Button
• ProgressBar (experimental support: unfinished)
• RichText (experimental support: unfinished)
• SpineSkeleton

Animations and other nodes are planned.

Supporting JavaScript scripts would be overkill. If you need JavaScript scripting support, just use Creator.

How to generate the needed files

1. Convert the .fire files into .json files
2. Compile the newly generated .json files into flatbuffer files
3. Copy the generated files to your project
4. Copy the needed assets to your project

From .fire to .json

The Python script to convert .fire to .json is called:

• convert_fire_to_json.py

And can be downloaded from this repository:

• https://github.com/ricardoquesada/creator_to_cocos2d

How to use it:

$ convert_fire_to_json.py \[--cocospath path\] \[--creatorassets\] fire_files_to_parse

• --cocospath: where the assets should be loaded in the cocos2d-x project. It will prepend this path to all the creator assets
• --creatorassets: where the default Creator assets are located. Usually they are in the temp directory of the project's root folder
• fire_files_to_parse: it could be one more multiple files. Glob patters are supported

Example:

# should load assets from Resources folder in the game
# Creator default assets are in temp
# The .fire files are located in assets
$ python convert_fire_to_json.py --cocospath Resources --creatorassets temp assets/*.fire

This Github respository also includes a Creator project that is used for testing. For example, this should work:

$ ./convert_fire_to_json.py --cocospath Resources --creatorassets creator_project/temp creator_project/assets/*.fire

The generated .json files will be placed in a folder named "json"

From .json to binary files

The JSON files are only generated as a temporary file format. It will not be efficient to parse JSON files in a game.

Instead a binary file based on Flatbuffers will be used instead

In order to generate the binary files, the following are needed:

• the schema ([CreatorReader.fbs]()) file
• that flatc (flatbuffer) compiler

And in order to generate the binary files just do:

$ flatc -b CreatorReader.fbs json/*.json

• -b: means generate "binary file"

flatc can be found here:

• macOS: precompiled binary flatc
• win32/linux: source code here: https://github.com/google/flatbuffers

Afer running flatc, you will find one or more files with the extension .ccreator. The .ccreator files are the binary files that should be copied to your cocos2d-x project.

Copy the generated files to your project

You should copy and include the following files to your Cocos2d-x project

• All the .ccreator files
• The Creator Reader lib:
  • You can find it here: reader

Copy the assets to your project

Finally you have to copy the asset uses by Creator in your project. You should copy:

• .png, .plist, .tmx, .ttf, *.fnt

Just copy them to the directory specified with --cocospath when convert_fire_to_json.py was run

You must copy:

• The user generated assets
• The default Creator assets (usually located in path_to_creator_project/assets)

Using it from C++

// mygame.cpp

#include "CreatorReader.h"

void some_function()
{
    CreatorReader* reader = CreatorReader::createWithFilename("creator/CreatorSprites.ccreator");

    // will create the needed spritesheets + design resolution
    reader->setup();

    // get the scene graph
    Scene* scene = reader->getSceneGraph();

    // ...and use it
    Director::getInstance()->replaceScene(scene);
}

A working example can be found here:

• https://github.com/ricardoquesada/cocos2d-x/tree/creator_reader

Just run "cpp-tests" and select "CreatorTest"