Installing Cocos2d-x in Linux Mint (Debian/Ubuntu) is quite similar to Mac and Windows that we have already gone through in the previous posts. If you don’t use linux, just skip this post.
For Linux development there are a few options to consider including Eclipse, QtCreator and more. My favorite is QtCreator which I am going to install in this post.
Install QtCreator
You can download the Open Source version of QT and use the editor and compiler to work on your game. We won’t need to actually use the QT libraries itself at all. We just need the editor! It is easy and just a standard install with no hassle.
- In QT website, click on the”Go open source” button at the right bottom of the page.
- In the new page go to the bottom of the page and press “Download the Qt Online Installer”.
- In the next page click on “Download” and wait for the download to finish.
- Run the installer and install QT Creator (You need to either sign in to your account or sign up for one)
- It will notify you that you don’t have a commercial license in your account but lets you continue with the Open Source!
- For the install folder specify where you want to install it. (I installed it under /home/rezagn/devapps/Qt)
- For components, select the most recent stable one (5.12.6 at this time) under Qt tree as below and press next.
- “Read” and Agree to the License Agreement and press next.
- Press Install (It will download and install the QT libraries, tools and IDE for you).
- You can launch QtCreator (Community Version) after the download and install are finished.
Install CMake
You need to have CMake installed on your machine to be able to create and open the cocos2d-x projects. If you already have CMake installed, make sure the version is bigger than 3.5.1 by checking in terminal.
cmake --version
If the version is older, remove CMake first.
sudo apt remove cmake
Then go to cmake.org and download the latest version (3.16.2) and extract the compressed file in a folder.
In a terminal go to that folder and run ./bootstrap to compile it.
./bootstrap
Then run make to link the files.
make
Now, you can install it by typing:
sudo make install
Install Cocos2d-x
Lets install our game engine now to be able to create some projects:
- Installing Cocos2d-x needs Python 2.7x installed. It is probably pre-installed in your Debian/Ubuntu/Mint Linux. You can check the python version in terminal to see if it is installed and you have the right one. Mine is 2.7.12.
python --version
- If by any chance you get an error and realize that you don’t have Python installed, just type:
sudo apt-get install python
- Download Cocos2d-x (cocos2d-x-4.0.zip) from www.cocos2d-x.org and unzip it in a folder that you want it to reside e.g. ~/devapps/
- Setup Cocos2d-x by running the setup.py in a terminal from inside of the unzipped folder e.g. ~/devapps/cocos2d-x-4.0/
python setup.py
- It sets up some environment variables first as below and then asks for some paths.
- COCOS_CONSOLE_ROOT
- COCOS_X_ROOT
- COCOS_TEMPLATES_ROOT
- If you have Android Studio and Apache Ant installed in your system:
- For NDK_ROOT question, put /home/rezagn/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle
- For ANDROID_SDK_ROOT question, put /home/rezagn/Android/Sdk/
- It should automatically find your Ant folder.
This is how the setup ran on my machine:
rezagn@Dell490 ~/devapps/cocos2d-x-4.0 $ python ./setup.py
Setting up cocos2d-x...
->Check environment variable COCOS_CONSOLE_ROOT
->Search for environment variable COCOS_CONSOLE_ROOT...
->COCOS_CONSOLE_ROOT is found : /home/rezagn/devapps/cocos2d-x-4.0/tools/cocos2d-console/bin
->Check environment variable COCOS_X_ROOT
->Search for environment variable COCOS_X_ROOT...
->COCOS_X_ROOT is found : /home/rezagn/devapps
->Check environment variable COCOS_TEMPLATES_ROOT
->Search for environment variable COCOS_TEMPLATES_ROOT...
->COCOS_TEMPLATES_ROOT is found : /home/rezagn/devapps/cocos2d-x-4.0/templates
->Configuration for Android platform only, you can also skip and manually edit "/home/rezagn/.bashrc"
->Check environment variable NDK_ROOT
->Search for environment variable NDK_ROOT...
->NDK_ROOT is found : /home/rezagn/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle
->Check environment variable ANDROID_SDK_ROOT
->Search for environment variable ANDROID_SDK_ROOT...
->ANDROID_SDK_ROOT is found : /home/rezagn/Android/Sdk/
Please execute command: "source /home/rezagn/.bashrc" to make added system variables take effect
rezagn@Dell490 ~/devapps/cocos2d-x-4.0 $
After going through the steps I mentioned above, I have these lines added to my ~/.bashrc settings file:
# Add environment variable COCOS_CONSOLE_ROOT for cocos2d-x export COCOS_CONSOLE_ROOT=/home/rezagn/devapps/cocos2d-x-4.0/tools/cocos2d-console/bin export PATH=$COCOS_CONSOLE_ROOT:$PATH # Add environment variable COCOS_X_ROOT for cocos2d-x export COCOS_X_ROOT="/home/rezagn/devapps" export PATH=$COCOS_X_ROOT:$PATH # Add environment variable COCOS_TEMPLATES_ROOT for cocos2d-x export COCOS_TEMPLATES_ROOT=/home/rezagn/devapps/cocos2d-x-4.0/templates export PATH=$COCOS_TEMPLATES_ROOT:$PATH # Add environment variable NDK_ROOT for cocos2d-x export NDK_ROOT="/home/rezagn/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle" export PATH=$NDK_ROOT:$PATH # Add environment variable ANDROID_SDK_ROOT for cocos2d-x export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT="/home/rezagn/Android/Sdk/" export PATH=$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT:$PATH export PATH=$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tools:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/platform-tools:$PATH # Add environment variable ANT_ROOT for cocos2d-x export ANT_ROOT="/usr/share/ant/bin" export PATH=$ANT_ROOT:$PATH
If you don’t have these, you can add them to your setup file manually. Just replace my username “rezagn” with yours and make sure the paths are correct.
Create a new project
To make new projects, we will use the cocos command in the terminal. If you just type cocos and press Enter, you will get the command line options help.
rezagn@Dell490 ~/Projects/games $ cocos /home/rezagn/devapps/cocos2d-x-4.0/tools/cocos2d-console/bin/cocos.py 2.3 - cocos console: A command line tool for Cocos2d-x. Available commands: run Compiles, deploy and run project on the target. luacompile Encrypt and/or compile lua files. deploy Compile and deploy a project to a device/simulator. compile Compile projects to binary. gen-simulator Generate Cocos Simulator. new Creates a new project. jscompile Compile and/or compress js files. Available arguments: -h, --help Show this help information. -v, --version Show the version of this command tool. --ol ['en', 'zh', 'zh_tr'] Specify the language of output messages. --agreement ['y', 'n'] Skip the agreement with specified value. Example: cocos new --help cocos run --help rezagn@Dell490 ~/Projects/games $
Create a new project by typing the full command as bellow. Feel free to change the folder as you wish.
cocos new install_test -p com.games.install_test -l cpp -d ~/Projects
This will make a project called “install_test” with all the necessary files and sub folders of the Cocos2d-x project in your specified folder!
Compile and run for Linux
- Run QtCreator
- From the menu go to “File->Open File or Project”.
- From the project root folder, open the CMakeLists.txt and press “Configure Project” button.
- From menu run “Build->Build All”. It will take a few minutes to compile your project.
- When the build is over (successful on mine), press Ctrl+R to run the project.
You probably noticed that the compile business took ages to complete (17 minutes and 49 seconds for me)! There is a way to make it a few times faster.
Just add the -j flag to your build settings and after -j specify the number of cores that you want to use for compiling. I put -j8 to use all my 8 cores on my ancient Linux machine!
That reduced the compile time to 2 minutes and 11 seconds! Feels much better!
Cool! We have QtCreator and Cocos2d-x installed and working on a Linux Mint now and can start working on our project in Linux too.
By the way, you could also use the QtCreator in both Windows and macOS if you wanted to.