Hello guys. I started learning mobile game development a month ago. As I have only android tablet and macbook I've started making game with Andengine. All is going ok but I've read some posts on forums that people usually switched from Andengine to Cocos2dx or some other framework.

As they wrote the best way is to build game for ios and the port it to android. I need some your suggestions. Is it really good way of development? What framework is better to use for 2D game?

P.S. I don't have any ios device to test game in it.

P.S. I'm looking for free frameworks.

It doesn't have the same performance as native frameworks but I find the Adobe AIR SDK being the simplest to use for cross platform mobile games especially for „not so complicated” 2D/3D games. It takes advantage of the Stage3D technology for GPU accelerated applications. CitrusEngine is a good engine that makes it easier to build and deploy games for mobile platforms and it's free.

I'm a big fan of Corona SDK for making 2D games -- the same code will do iOS and Android. No porting required, although in minor instances you may have to tweak specific things for each platform (I almost never have to do that). If you're wanting to do hard-core racing games, shooters, or something where you need to scrape the bare metal for power, it's not a good fit. But for typical casual games, adventure games, etc., it's very well suited for those.

While you can pay for the framework, they now have a Starter Edition that has the same power as the Pro edition but just removes the ability to do in-app purchases. You can still monetize with ads, or just sell your app straight out. (Or, upgrade to Pro later if you decide you need IAP.)

I created a one-hour "Crash Course" video tutorial for Corona SDK that you can see her: http://masteringcoronasdk.com/game-development-crash-course/ It requires registering on the site to see the videos, but nothing else. That might give you a good idea on whether Corona SDK is a good fit for what you want to do.

Good luck!

Jay

I have used cocos2d-x for about 6 months, I have to say its very easy to target ios, for android the setup is a bit tricky, once you have compiled and run cocos2d-x hello world project for android, then its easy afterwards. You don't have to touch most of your code to target android, only you need to add support for different resolutions of android devices.

It has also as a big community, lots of tutorials and many third-party tools have integrated their library with cocos2d-x. If unity3d is most popular commercial engine then cocos2d-x is most popular open source 2d engine.