What do you need to know to create a game for the iPhone? Even if you've already built some iPhone applications, developing games using iPhone's gestural interface and limited screen layout requires new skills. With iPhone Game Development, you get everything from game development basics and iPhone programming fundamentals to guidelines for dealing with special graphics and audio needs, creating in-game physics, and much more. Loaded with descriptive examples and clear explanations, this book helps you learn the technical design issues particular to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and suggests ways to maximize performance in different types of games. You also get plug-in classes to compensate for the areas where the iPhone's game programming support is weak.

• Learn how to develop iPhone games that provide engaging user experiences

• Become familiar with Objective-C and the Xcode suite of tools

• Learn what it takes to adapt the iPhone interface to games

• Create a robust, scalable framework for a game app

• Understand the requirements for implementing 2D and 3D graphics

• Learn how to add music and audio effects, as well as menus and controls

• Get instructions for publishing your game to the App Store

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 8 Ratings

Overall Good game dev book, NOT for noobs! - 2009-12-06
Reviewer Rating:
This book was very helpful in conveying some crutiel concepts for game development! The section on setting up a solid game state and how to manage resources was excellent and will go along way in my coding.

The author jumps around in the first few chapters but pulls it all together nicely once you get half way through reading. This book is really not meant for beginners and you will likely be lost if you dont approach this book with prior object oriented programming, C++ and/or Objective-C experience.

My overall impression on the book is this: The book does lack code examples and expects you to download the code examples from the site, which i actually ended up liking because the book is a much faster read and i can review the code of my computer instead. There appears to be some inconsistencies with the code and the book and you can figure that out if you know what you are doing! If you are looking for a nice 2d engine to use in your own games, this book is a great help and will give you everything you need to start coding 2D games(after some experimenting). I'm very happy with this book and hope the author continues to write more game dev books! Only reason for 4 instead of 5 stars is the few errors/inconsistencies in the code examples from book vs online examples.

A Guide to Game Development on the iPhone - 2010-01-07
Reviewer Rating:
First, I'm a newbie to iPhone game development, so I can't speak to the accuracy or completeness of the code that is contained in the book. But in looking through the book, it appears that the book is written to provide a general overview and philosophy of game development on the iPhone, not to be a code-complete reference. As in most iPhone books, they first introduce the device, then describe the capabilities of the device, then go into more detail talking about the hardware and software framework in which game development and play will take place.

In reading the book, I got a general idea of the capabilities and potential of the iPhone as a gaming platform, with some suggestions of ways to go to implement your ideas for a game, both in 2D and 3D. There is a short but pertinent summary chapter giving further information and development tips for using open source gaming engines, as well as ways to tap into the expertise of the iPhone gaming community.

For anyone willing to climb the steep mountain of iPhone gaming, this book should be part of your library.

Recommended.

A Complete Rip! - 2009-12-05
Reviewer Rating:
This book is a mess, if you can't get past the first example I don't hold out much hope for the rest of this book. Like other reviewers have stated the examples just don't work! Something is seriously wrong here. I am sure the first 5 star review is from the authors Mom or high school buddy. In any coding book if your examples don't work its really hard to get a handle on what you are doing. The down-loadable source code looks nothing like the book source and doesn't compile or run either!

Excellent Game Development Book - 2010-02-04
Reviewer Rating:
I don't quite understand the one star reviews of this book, I'm also an iPhone Developer (or attempting to be one) and not a great coder but this book delivers, it sets up a solid framework for games that can be re-used time and again and it actually deals with things in a stage by stage manner. Some iPhone Game Books never even mention sprites or show how to run animations and surely this is necessary in a book about how to create games for the iPhone, this book does both. The book also deals with both 2D and 3D games and both sections are packed with info. The downloadable source code has been updated to reflect what is now available in the SDK 3.0 there is also a 'read me' text giving errata from the book so I don't even understand this complaint unless the other reviewers read 'Read me' as 'don't read me'.

The book lays a solid foundation and the framework they set up does work, it took me 2 days of reading the book and using the code to set up the beginnings of a game. Obviously every game is different so much of the code is useless as one would expect but if you can't write your own game code and are relying on other people to do it for you surely you are in the wrong business.

I have virtually every iPhone Programming book there is (like many rubbish programmers I'm convinced a wealth of books makes up for a lack of insight), including all the Game Programming books and this is the ONLY game programming book worth buying. Highly recommended.

Useless - 2010-02-03
Reviewer Rating:
As the other reviews state - this book is so full of errors it is completely useless. Do not waste your time! Two evenings of frustration are enough for me... I'm looking for something else to learn from now...

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Hardware
Programming

Sub-Categories:
Hardware > Mobile Phone
Programming > Game Programming