iPhone Game Development: Developing 2D & 3D games in Objective-C (Animal Guide) 1st Edition

by Paul Zirkle (Author), Joe Hogue (Author)

23 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0596159856

ISBN-10: 0596159854

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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

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul Zirkle has five years of mobile game programming experience and is currently a Lead Mobile Programmer at Konami Digital Entertainment. He has worked on over 40 titles, including porting, re-writing and full development. Occasionally, Paul is called upon to give lectures on game development at the University of Southern California.

Joe Hogue has five years of mobile game programming experience. He worked with Paul at Konami and currently works for Electronic Arts as a Mobile Programmer. Joe has worked on over 40 titles as well, including porting, re-writes and full development. Joe has written an iPhone game that is currently being submitted to the iTunes AppStore.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (December 1, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 260 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0596159854
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0596159856
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.55 x 9.19 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,503,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,456 in Design & Graphics Software Books
- #1,625 in Digital Video Production (Books)
- #2,306 in Handheld & Mobile Devices

Customer Reviews:
23 ratings

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5 star		11%
4 star		20%
3 star		17%
2 star		32%
1 star		20%

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William Everhart

Too many mistakes, too many assumptions

Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2010

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I'm into Chapter 3 and there have already been at least a dozen mistakes in the code. The book is also written poorly in that while working on the same sample project, they keep switching between two names, they call it "Example" and "Test", leading newer readers to be confused if they should be editing "ExampleAppDelegate" or "TestAppDelegate".

Rather then trying to rush these books out to be the first, take more time and get them right.

I'm returning my copy.

Helpful

Leo Bailey

My Opinion of the book has changed.

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2010

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I had entered the following under the comments section of a previous and after the last 10 days of digging into code I thought I should use it to create a review.

I have to admit that I had serious misgivings about purchasing this book after reading the other reviews. One of my friends at work recommended it and I eventually downloaded the Kindle edition on my iPad. I thoroughly enjoyed the first 2 chapters. I've been working on a game design for a few weeks and was glad to see that some of my thoughts/designs were not far off. I allocated an entire day to get the framework described in Chapter 3 up and running. I read the chapter first then took a day off from work and dove in. It took a solid 9 hours to get things up and running. I still have a few glitches but for the most part the framework performs as expected. One thing I'll say - it forced me to learn a lot and dig deep into the code. The result is that I now have a reasonably good understanding of the design and I think I can take it and apply it for my needs. Pounding new knowledge into one's head is generally somewhat painful - but it's not necessarily a bad way to learn.

With that said, it would have been a bit easier if the examples and book code had matched up a bit more but I'm not to keen on complete listings eating up book space - still - getting the framework in chapter 3 to run was a challenge. Now that it's behind me I'll spend a few days documenting the model. I'll clean it up where it needs to be and change those items that will make it more aligned with what I have in mind. Then I'll dive into Chapter 4.

I'd rate the book with 4 stars (I originally thought only 3). As others have said, there are places in the text where the actual code doesn't match with the snippets in the book nor with the downloaded sourceforge examples. Mostly, I relied on other books that I have and the Apple documentation (or the framework H files) when I needed additional help. Working though this was like picking up someone's code at work and trying to figure out the design in preparation for a refactoring effort. Bottom line - it forced me to behave like I do at work when learning a new system.

Ok - About a week later now... I've down loaded the sourceforge code for Chapter 3 and it appears to be working fine. Stepping through with the debugger is well worth the time spent. Still have some issues with it displaying properly on an iPad but I'll figure that out as I get the time (which I've now done). I've started restructuring and documenting the relevant parts of the code that I find useful. The low-level portions with textures/fonts etc. helped get my old C-pointer skills dusted off. It was a painful experience but I believe I've finally got what I need from the text. Feel like I broke a couple of shovels whilst doing the digging.

Another week and a half have passed and I have used the sourceforge code to create a game framework. I've written routines to create random mazes and have added code that uses the accelerometer to let me "walk" an emu chick animation through the maze. Not perfect yet but I'll keep improving the base and documenting what I do.

Lke others who have commented I was initially frustrated when I started but I followed the author's advice and after stepping through the code with the debugger and adding my own documentation it's actually not bad and extremely interesting to see how this is all put together. Of course everyone learns at a different pace and a different way. Someone in a previous post suggested that this was probably not a beginner's book... could be. I have 15+ years of C & C++ experience in my background and I admit that has helped make the transition to Objective-C a bit easier. (I had done nothing with Objective-C until about three months ago.) My advice would be to keep going... There really are some interesting "code-nuggets' inside this framework.

5 people found this helpful

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Kirk Burleson

Could Have Been Awesome

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2010

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I'm sure I wasn't the only one who just couldn't wait to get this book in the mail. I was so excited when it arrived that I immediately tore into it. And then I typed in the code in chapter 3... It doesn't work. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for publishing code that does not work! Yes, you can look at the errata and work it out, but that's not the point. There's good information in this book and you will take something away from reading it, but I give 1 star to any book that publishes code that doesn't run. It's like having spelling errors on your resume, it says that you're too lazy to run a spell checker. In this case the authors were too lazy to run their code.

One person found this helpful

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R. Kumro

Overall Good game dev book, NOT for noobs!

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2009

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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.

7 people found this helpful

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Two Stars

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2016

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Many of the code samples are incomplete or do not compile

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M. Wyckoff

Good iPhone development book

Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2010

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I am a software engineer and enjoy programming. I do not do iPhone applications professionally but have always wanted to write a game. This book is helping me accomplish this. I think the iPhone provides a great market and platform for gaming.

One person found this helpful

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Doleck

A Complete Rip!

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2009

Verified Purchase

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!

3 people found this helpful

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Mr. J. Mccormack

Disappointing Cash-In

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2010

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Hey, iPhone game development is going to be huge! Let's get a book out, quick!

Oh, but no need to put much detail in there. Why not just say stuff like "Sprite-based games need collision detection routines, so you better write some", and don't bother to tell us how.

Running at 230 pages, it's an unbelievably slim volume. Very poor value.

Pfoto

Insgesamt durchaus brauchbar

Reviewed in Germany on December 11, 2010

Verified Purchase

Es stimmt, das in Teilen auch C++ oder nur C eingesetzt wird, jedoch mit
der Begründung der Autoren, dass dadurch das Framework viel schneller auch
auf andere Plattformen portierbar ist.
Ein gewisses Grundwissen in C kann auch dem Objektive-C-Programmierer nicht
schaden, denn viele kleine Helfer-Funktionen und Strukturen können in C
sehr praktisch aufgebaut werden.

Mir persönlich hat auch der Aufbau und Überlegungen der Autoren zur Engine
gefallen. Sie gehen dabei auf Details wie das Erstellen von Animationen ein,
in Grundzügen auf simple AI der "Gegner" oder das Sortieren der Sprite auf
der Z-Achse.

Ich habe schon 4-5 Bücher und eine Menge Tutorials zu diesem Thema gelesen
und jedes war ein Gewinn für mich. Denn jeder Autor bringt andere Überlegungen
und Philosophien mit ein. Dann liegt es beim Leser, aus diesen "Zutaten"
das nach eigenen Ansprüchen Beste oder Sinnvollste herauszusuchen und sich
ein eigenes Framework aufzubauen. Wem dies zu kompliziert oder einfach auch
zu mühsam ist, der sollte einfach ein fertiges Game-Framework einsetzen, z.B.
Cocos2D oder Sparrow (auch 2D).

Die Beispiele sind im Internet herunterladbar und lassen sich nach Auswahl des
aktuellsten iOS-SDK auch zum Laufen bringen.

One person found this helpful

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Dr. Chrilly Donninger

Schnell zusammengeschustert

Reviewed in Germany on December 27, 2009

Verified Purchase

iPhone Programmierung ist ein heisses Gebiet geworden. Dementsprechend gibt es nun einen Wettlauf wer das erste Buch zu einem speziellen Gebiet herausbringt. Der allgemeine Aufbau des Buches ist nicht schlecht, der abgedruckte Kode ist aber kompletter Mist. Er lässt sich nicht einmal kompilieren und unterscheidet sich wesentlich vom Kode auf der homepage der Autoren. Offensichtlich haben die Autoren ins Buch irgendwas hingeschrieben und dann die Zeit bis zur fertigen Ausgabe für eine zumindest kompilierbare Version genützt.
O tempora, o mores.

2 people found this helpful

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iPhone Game Development: Developing 2D & 3D games in Objective-C (Animal Guide) 1st Edition

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