iPhone Games Projects and over 670,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Learn more

 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
Express Checkout with PayPhrase
What's this? | Create PayPhrase
More Buying Choices
62 used & new from $1.72
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
or
Get a $3.54 Amazon.com Gift Card
iPhone Games Projects
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book
Start reading iPhone Games Projects on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

iPhone Games Projects [Paperback]

PJ Cabrera (Author), Joachim Bondo (Author), Brian Greenstone (Author), Mike Lee (Author), Jamie Gotch (Author), Michael Kasprzak (Author), Richard Zito (Author), Matthew Aitken (Author), Olivier Hennessy (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
List Price: $39.99
Price: $26.39 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
You Save: $13.60 (34%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Want it delivered Wednesday, September 8? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
31 new from $1.72 31 used from $1.72
Textbook StudentJoin Amazon Student and get FREE Two-Day Shipping for one year with Amazon Prime shipping benefits.

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition $17.59   -- --
Paperback $26.39   $1.72 $1.72
Sell This Book Back for $3.54
Whether you buy it used on Amazon for $1.72 or somewhere else, you can sell it back to our Textbook Buyback Store at the current price of $3.54 through December 31, 2010. Restrictions Apply

Special Offers and Product Promotions

Frequently Bought Together

iPhone Games Projects + iPhone Cool Projects + iPhone Advanced Projects
Price For All Three: $79.17

Show availability and shipping details

Buy the selected items together

  • In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details

  • iPhone Cool Projects by Gary Bennett Paperback$26.39

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details

  • iPhone Advanced Projects by Dylan Bruzenak Paperback$26.39

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

iPhone Cool Projects

iPhone Cool Projects

by Gary Bennett
4.0 out of 5 stars (15)  $26.39
iPhone Advanced Projects

iPhone Advanced Projects

by Dylan Bruzenak
3.7 out of 5 stars (3)  $26.39
Beginning iPhone Games Development

Beginning iPhone Games Development

by PJ Cabrera
3.8 out of 5 stars (15)  $26.39
iPhone Game Development: Developing 2D & 3D games in Objective-C (Animal Guide)

iPhone Game Development: Developing 2D & 3D games in Objective-C (Animal Guide)

by Paul Zirkle
2.6 out of 5 stars (14)  $23.09
iPhone User Interface Design Projects

iPhone User Interface Design Projects

by Joachim Bondo
5.0 out of 5 stars (2)  $26.39
› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

One look at the App Store will show you just how hot iPhone games have become. Games make up over 25 percent of all apps, and over 70 percent of the apps in the App Store's Most Popular category. Surprised? Of course not! We've all filled our iPhones with games, and many of us hope to develop the next best seller.

This book is a collection of must-know information from master independent iPhone game developers. In it, you'll discover how some of the most innovative and creative game developers have made it to the pinnacle of game design and profitability. This book is loaded with practical tips for efficient development, and for creating compelling, addictive gaming experiences. And it's not all talk! It's supported with code examples that you can download and use to realize your own great ideas.

This book's authors are responsible for some of the all-time most popular and talked-about games:

  • Brian Greenstone developed Enigmo and Cro-Mag Rally.
  • Aaron Fothergill developed Flick Fishing.
  • Mike Lee developed Tap Tap Revolution, the most downloaded game in App Store history.
  • Mike Kasprzak's Smiles was a finalist in the IGF 2009 Best Mobile Game competition.
  • PJ Cabrera, Richard Zito, and Matthew Aitken (Quick Draw, Pole2Pole); Joachim Bondo (Deep Green); and Olivier Hennessy and Clayton Kane (Apache Lander) have received glowing reviews and accolades for their games.

Pair iPhone Games Projects with Apress's best-selling Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK, and you'll have everything you need to create the next game to top the sales charts.

What you'll learn

  • How to optimize games using iPhone SDK tools such as Instruments and Shark, and how to optimize your graphics and sound files for the best performance
  • Insight into the art and craft of game design
  • How to implement social networking in your game with RESTful web services
  • Tips on rapid game development with C on iPhone
  • How to increase your market by developing games that run on iPhone, Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows
  • How to create multiplayer iPhone games

Who is this book for?

All iPhone game developers, and anyone with an iPhone who wants to learn how games are made

About the Author

Mike Lee, the world’s toughest programmer, is the founder and CEO of United Lemur, a philanthropic revolution disguised as a software company. Mike has had a role in creating many popular iPhone applications, including Obama ‘08, Tap Tap Revenge, Twinkle, and Jott.



Prior to iPhone, Mike cut his teeth — and won an Apple Design Award — at Seattle–based Delicious Monster Software. Mike is originally from Honolulu, is a popular blogger and occasional pundit, and has been seen on Twitter as @bmf.



Mike and his wife are originally from Honolulu, but currently live in Silicon Valley where they are raising two cats. Mike’s hobbies include weightlifting, single malts, and fire.



Mike can be contacted at mike@unitedlemur.org.



PJ Cabrera is a software engineer with more than 12 years of experience developing information systems in various industries, programming in C, C++, Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby. But his real passion for many years has been hacking gadgets (i.e., turning a Sega Dreamcast into a NetBSD router, or running Android and Debian GNU/Linux on a Palm TX) and making home-brewed games for consoles such as Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, GameBoy Advance, and PSP. He is very excited that he can finally share his creative side on iPhone and XBox 360 with the general public through the App Store and XNA Community Games.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 280 pages
  • Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (June 29, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1430219688
  • ISBN-13: 978-1430219682
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #63,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #67 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Handheld & Mobile Devices
    #46 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Game Programming

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

iPhone Games Projects
30% buy the item featured on this page:
iPhone Games Projects by PJ Cabrera Paperback 3.0 out of 5 stars (29)
$26.39
Beginning iPhone Games Development
29% buy
Beginning iPhone Games Development by PJ Cabrera Paperback 3.8 out of 5 stars (15)
$26.39
Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
19% buy
Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK by Jeff LaMarche Paperback 4.5 out of 5 stars (202)
$26.39
More iPhone 3 Development: Tackling iPhone SDK 3 (Beginning)
12% buy
More iPhone 3 Development: Tackling iPhone SDK 3 (Beginning) by Jeff LaMarche Paperback 4.8 out of 5 stars (16)
$26.39
› Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(11)
(8)
(7)
(5)
(5)
(5)
(4)
(4)
(4)
(1)
Agree with these tags?
See all 11 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags
 

Customer Reviews

29 Reviews
5 star:
 (7)
4 star:
 (7)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (7)
1 star:
 (7)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (29 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars For Advice Only, June 28, 2009
By S. Carmody (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: iPhone Games Projects (Paperback)
There is some practical knowledge in this book, but it is not what I was expecting when I purchased it. I ordered the book before it was released, so that is my mistake. But the title and description of the book is misleading.

This is not a book with details on a variety of games with hands-on programming examples and ideas on how to make the gameplay work well on the iPhone. It is a collection of chapters of iPhone game building advice. The advice is often excellent, and the book is a unique source for this information. But know that you will bump into phrases like "I hope I've inspired you" and "the true future of iPhone game development is up to you, dear reader". So the advice is also often cheesy, bathetic, and almost maudlin.

Imagine if you met an experienced iPhone developer that had just finished a big project. Then you asked him/her: "Have any advice for me when building an iPhone game"? That is what this book is. If you feel that would help you, then dive on in.

IMHO, this was not enough material worthy of an entire book. Some chapters are excellent, but many of them read as if they would be magazine articles. They are that general and light on details.

I have several of the Apress books, and this one is a disappointment. I finished it in 2 hours and don't feel there will many times I will pull it off the bookshelf in the future. This book should be called "iPhone Advice and Occasional Tips from Game Developers".
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Grab bag of iPhone game dev, July 3, 2009
This review is from: iPhone Games Projects (Paperback)
In the past, I have worked on game development projects on PC, xbox360, ps2, ps3 and Wii. Like many developers these days, I'm 'dipping my toes in the water' with casual iPhone game dev.

What I liked about this book:

First, the best thing about this book, and really what makes it worthwhile, is that it's written by people that are actually making their livelihood by developing games on the iPhone. So the advice is all very concrete, practical and the examples all come from the real world.

The technical advice ranges from very general stuff, to moderately technical. Often the advice is worthwhile to casual game dev in general, but not specific to iPhone.

The chapters that did provide code samples or downloads were very useful, and the code was good, real-world examples. The chapters tended to illustrate a particular tip or trick, which could be very helpful if that was something useful to you, but might be completely useless if not. For example, if (like myself) you are hoping to write games in C/C++ (mostly) that can be released on both iPhone and desktop, then the chapter on cross platform development is extremely helpful. But if you are targeting iPhone only, it's not very relevant.

Also, the quality of the book was very good, with full color illustrations throughout.

What I didn't like:

Calling this "Projects" is very misleading. Very few examples are 'projects', i.e. walking you through a tutorial-style project that you can recreate. If you are familiar with the "Game Programming Gems" series, then this book is much closer to that -- a collection of tips, tricks and techniques from practitioners.

Some of the advice (for example, the "Design Doc" chapter, or the "Interface Design" one) is good advice for game development, but not particularly specific for the iPhone. If you are familiar with the process of game development on another platform, a lot of this will be familiar advice.

In particular, I was disappointed not to see much discussion of the iPhone's unique input features like the accelerometers and multi-touch.

Overall, this is a good book but it has a bit of an identity crisis. Some of the articles are fairly technical, while others are appropriate for beginners (or even non-programmers "game designers"). There's a little something for everyone in here, but the flip side of that means that there will probably be a few chapters that you could live without.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Good Book, but you MUST understand its purpose, October 14, 2009
This review is from: iPhone Games Projects (Paperback)
Note: For the sake of full disclosure, let me state that I offered to review the book and I was sent a PDF copy.

The short review: This is a good book full of interesting nuggets of information from people who have written iPhone games. This is NOT a "how to program iPhone games" book. If that's what you are looking for, you will be very disappointed as some of the other reviewers were.

The longer review:

I really enjoyed the information presented in the book. The information presented is not unlike sitting around with a bunch of programmers and asking them for mini lessons and tips. You're not going to build any projects from start to finish, and each chapter is a separate chunk of information.

That being said, you're going to get a lot of exposure to code snippets and general ideas. The chapter on RESTful web services shows you how this approach is incorporated into a game project. There's a great chapter on how to design games, not from a programming perspective, but from a general design perspective. There's an interesting chapter on code optimization and how to use shark to do profiling.

The topics presented are a loose collective of general tidbits all falling under the concept of iPhone game programming. It's almost like you went to a conference and these were a handful of random sessions that you sat in on.

I would have given the book five stars it it was a little more code-centric. After all, I'd like a bit more of a take-away besides the intangibles presented. I'm sure I'm going to apply these concepts once I find the game programming book that actually teaches me game programming theory and practice.

If you like this book, I *highly* recommend "iPhone Cool Projects". It's more code-centric than this one, but still has that loose feel that lets you jump into any chapter out of order.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Not a Real Guide
Pre-ordered this because I liked other iphone titles in this series. This is not a guide or examples. Read more
Published 4 months ago by T. Kincaid

2.0 out of 5 stars A bit of a let down...
I have all the Apress series of books for the iPhone, they are a bit of a mixed bunch really and this is a prime example. Read more
Published 7 months ago by John Donovan

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Reading
This is a must read book if you are planning any type of game for the iPhone. The first chapter is a walk through of a basic game that I have already seen iterations of in the... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Thomas Mon

3.0 out of 5 stars "IPhone Games Project" is a good book
This book is intended for advanced programmers who want to improve the design, development and optimization of games beautiful, functional and appealing for iPhone by following... Read more
Published 9 months ago by B. Emilio

5.0 out of 5 stars A technical yet top pick for any library strong in iPhone or games programming specifics
iPhone game developers share their techniques and secrets in IPHONE GAMES PROJECTS, a survey of the most popular games and how they were created. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Midwest Book Review

1.0 out of 5 stars Not appropriate for a course on game design
I was about to order this book as required reading for my game design class. We will build iPhone games this spring, and enrollment so far is off the charts. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Old Woman Gamer

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't let these reviews fool you
I had look at this book on amazon before and decided not to buy it because of all the negative reviews. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Marc Hebert

2.0 out of 5 stars Not all of those are gems...
I join the previous reviewers in their disappointment, but the most amazing thing about this book is that the material written by the book's Lead Author PJ Cabrera is such a... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Alexander Kolesnikov

5.0 out of 5 stars Great advice
The games examples were a fun read, but the best thing to take home was the optimization section. It is hard to get satisfactory performance to fill that 320x480 screen full of... Read more
Published 12 months ago by L. Palm

1.0 out of 5 stars No, no, no.
Sorry for the writers of the book but I fell that this is just a waste of money. In a nut shell - It is a collection of programmers that would not have a clue on how to tutor or... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Wayne Hawkins

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
surrounded 0 August 2009
"It's like a permanent 'Get Out of Jail Free' card!" 2 May 2009
› See all 2 discussions...  
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
   

So You'd Like to...


Create a guide

Look for Similar Items by Category

Look for Similar Items by Subject

Search Books by subject:























i.e., each book must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...
 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.