Now comes the part where you may need to spend a bit more money to get some extremely helpful tools (and do some extra bit of learning). In this book's examples, I use four of them:
A tool to help build sprite sheets: I'll use TexturePacker (http://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker). There are other alternatives, such as Zwoptex (http://zwopple.com/zwoptex/), and they usually offer some features for free. Cocos2d-x now offers a free program called CocosStudio, which is somewhat similar to SpriteBuilder (previously CocosBuilder), and it offers ways to build sprite sheets, bitmap fonts, as well as a number of other goodies. At the time of writing this, the Windows version is somewhat superior to the Mac version, but they are free!
A tool to help build particle effects: I'll use Particle Designer (http://www.71squared.com/en/particledesigner). Depending on your operating system, you may find free tools online for this. Cocos2d-x comes bundled with some common particle effects that you can customize. But doing it blindly is a process I do not recommend. CocosStudio also allows you to create your own particle effects, but you may find its interface a bit daunting. It certainly requires its own book of tutorials!
A tool to help build bitmap fonts: I'll use Glyph Designer (http://www.71squared.com/en/glyphdesigner). But there are others: bmGlyph (which is not as expensive) and FontBuilder (which is free). It is not extremely hard to build a bitmap font—not nearly as hard as building a particle effect from scratch—but doing it once is enough to convince you to get one of these tools fast. Once again, you might give CocosStudio a go.
A tool to produce sound effects: No contest—sfxr for Windows or its Mac port cfxr. Both are free (http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html and http://thirdcog.eu/apps/cfxr, respectively).