Book Image

Getting Started with SpriteKit

By : Jorge Jordán
Book Image

Getting Started with SpriteKit

By: Jorge Jordán

Overview of this book

SpriteKit is Apple’s game engine to develop native iOS games. Strongly boosted by the Apple Inc., Cupertino, it has increased in popularity since its first release. This book shows you the solutions provided by SpriteKit to help you create any 2D game you can imagine and apply them to create animations that will highlight your existing apps. This book will give you the knowledge you need to apply SpriteKit to your existing apps or create your own games from scratch. Throughout the book, you will develop a complete game. The beautiful designs implemented in the game in this book will easily lead you to learn the basis of 2D game development, including creating and moving sprites, and adding them to a game scene. You will also discover how to apply advanced techniques such as collision detection, action execution, playing music, or running animations to give a more professional aspect to the game. You will finish your first game by learning how to add a main menu and a tutorial, as well as saving and loading data from and to the player’s device. Finally, you will find out how to apply some mobile games techniques such as accelerometer use or touch detection.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Getting Started with SpriteKit
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Game engines


I remember the time when I developed my first game using the BASIC programming language on my old Amstrad CPC. In those times, every game was hardware-specific, which means that you had to take into account every machine's low-level characteristics.

A game engine is a collection of software instructions that eases the process of game development by providing abstraction between the hardware and software layers. This way, you don't need to waste your efforts when performing important tasks, such as handling user inputs, playing sound and video, rendering images, or simulating physics.

As mentioned previously, SpriteKit is an engine developed by Apple to create games, and it's one of the most powerful tools that are used to build native 2D games for both iOS and Max OS X.