@Mark Buckingham: Would it be fair to say that if you're doing a 2D game like galaga, then Core Animation might work well, but not if you're trying for a 3D game?
I can't think of any reason offhand it wouldn't work. OpenGL is the most common choice, and would probably perform better (as it's a lower-level API), but Core Animation may allow you to write the game much more quickly than with raw OpenGL. This doesn't take into account pre-built game engines that use OpenGL, of course.
But, essentially, yes. It should work for 2D games, or even games with 2D objects in 3D space -- along the lines of paper Mario. Core Animation can also natively accept Quartz Composer and QuickTime content (or even video from the iSight), which may be an advantage.
I think you should also be able to take a hybrid approach, mixing Core Animation with OpenGL content. This is outside of my area of knowledge, though, so I'm not sure what the details are.
by Scott Stevenson — Oct 06
I can't think of any reason offhand it wouldn't work. OpenGL is the most common choice, and would probably perform better (as it's a lower-level API), but Core Animation may allow you to write the game much more quickly than with raw OpenGL. This doesn't take into account pre-built game engines that use OpenGL, of course.
But, essentially, yes. It should work for 2D games, or even games with 2D objects in 3D space -- along the lines of paper Mario. Core Animation can also natively accept Quartz Composer and QuickTime content (or even video from the iSight), which may be an advantage.
I think you should also be able to take a hybrid approach, mixing Core Animation with OpenGL content. This is outside of my area of knowledge, though, so I'm not sure what the details are.