Well I’m not as far as I would like, but I’ve been able to overcome some hurdles and learn some techniques. I’ve mostly pawned through some tutorials and because a discussion with objective-c. So far I have:

• coded some collision detection
• learned cocos two touch event systems: implemented sprite navigation and projectile targeting
• used Tiled to generate a tile based map with various object/meta layers
• got really frustrated trying to make original pixel art

I’d still like to figure out how to smoothly drag my sprite. My attempts so far yielded really stuttered behavior. I’d also like to create an a draggable element that wraps around the borders of the screen (poor description, but it means something to me). Here’s hoping I can tackle one of those shortly!

First screenshot, after much dicking around:

Once again, thanks to Ray W. He has some great tutorials on his site, including but not limited to:

http://www.raywenderlich.com/1186/collisions-and-collectables-how-to-make-a-tile-based-game-with-cocos2d-part-2