Been reading about Cocos2d and SpriteKit on here to get the requisite knowledge to write a screen saver. Which of these two libraries (or perhaps another) is the best way to go for a boucing ball (i.e. bouncing around off the screen boundaries) effect?
I’ve never implemented a screensaver, so I can’t comment on that specific use case, but either Cocos2D or SpriteKit will be suitable for creating a bouncing ball animation.
The two frameworks are extremely similar, and I’m pretty sure that Cocos2D’s api at least in part informed the design and naming conventions of SpriteKit.
Cocos2D is a little more powerful and flexible, but development has really stalled in the past few years, so I worry a little bit about relying on it from a future maintenance perspective. There is a new initiative to try and revive it, although not from the original development team. I hope that works out, but I’ll personally be sitting back and seeing how things go with that for a bit before I give it a go again.
Personally I’m using SpriteKit and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a little less capable than Cocos2D if you want to do advanced OpenGL customisations, but for the most part it includes everything you could need, and you hopefully don’t have to worry about it going away away time soon.