I’ve wanted to learn iPhone games development, so when I had a chance to purchase a Mac last year, I jumped at the opportunity. Alongside the Mac, I purchased a book on iPhone application development. What I didn’t realize at the time is that there is a big difference between iPhone “application development” and iPhone “game development”. The book I purchased is an excellent source for developing applications and gives a lot of insight into iPhone development; however, it doesn’t take you there.
I’ve had experience with Garage Games, Inc.’s Torque game engine in the past. I knew that they had been working on cross platform development. However, when I went to their website, the future of an iPhone development tool appeared questionable. In researching for this blog entry, I see that iTorque 2D is available now. It may be a perfectly viable option that requires investigation. However, word of mouth stepped in.
My nephew introduced me to cocos2d (http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/) engine. A free 2d engine for iPhone game development with a ton of online community support. Sounds perfect, but where to start? How about a book? Enter “Learn iPhone and iPad cocos2d Game Development” by Steffen Itterheim (Apress).
At this point, I’ve read chapters 1-3 twice (the second time as a restart). For 3 chapters, there is only one hands on; however, there is a lot of required excellent information. Whenever I start a project, the structure of the project is important because I like to develop in an iterative process. Iterative processes get interrupted by code refactoring causing loss of momentum. For me, it was important to glean from the author how an iPhone game would be broken down into scenes and how each scene would flow into the next.
After reading the first three chapters, a long time developer will be chomping at the bit to get started.