Book Image

Sparrow iOS Game Framework Beginner's Guide

By : Stein
Book Image

Sparrow iOS Game Framework Beginner's Guide

By: Stein

Overview of this book

An easy-to-follow guide full of descriptive step-by-step procedures on how to develop a game for iOS. With each topic, a new challenge will be tackled to get a deeper knowledge of the Sparrow game framework and gain the skills to develop a complete mobile experience. This book is aimed at those who have always wanted to create their own games for iOS devices. Perhaps you've already dabbled in game development and want to know how to develop games for the Apple App Store, or maybe you have developed Objective-C apps in the past but you are new to game development. In either case, this book will help with descriptive examples and teach you to develop a game throughout its course. Some experience in Objective-C and a basic understanding of object-oriented programming are required.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
13
Afterword
14
Index

Contents of the Sparrow package

After the download has finished, extract the file to a location of your choice. We can use the unpacker that is included in Mac OS X by default, but any third-party unpacker should work as well. Let's take a look at the following screenshot to see what the Sparrow package has to offer:

Contents of the Sparrow package

The samples folder

The samples folder consists of three subfolders, and they are as follows:

  • barebone: This is a bare minimum project and a good start for creating your own games and will serve as the template for our game as well
  • demo: This is a sample application showcasing many of the features found within Sparrow
  • scaffold: The scaffold template provides some base classes and more boilerplate code than the barebone example

The sparrow folder

The sparrow folder has three subfolders, and they are as follows:

  • doc: This has a script to generate the documentation
  • src: This is the entire source of the Sparrow framework itself
  • util: This has different command-line tools which will help our workflow when dealing with graphic assets

Markdown files in the root folder

Markdown files are, in essence, text files that can be rendered into HTML files. They are as follows:

  • BUILDING.md: This gives a quick start on how to use the library
  • CHANGELOG.md: This gives a detailed list of items on what exactly changed between the versions
  • LICENSE.md: This is the license Sparrow uses
  • README.md: This is a short introduction into what Sparrow is

License

Sparrow is a free and open source software, which means its source can be viewed and modified by anyone.

Like many other pieces of software in the Mac/iOS universe, Sparrow is licensed under an unmodified two-clause Simplified BSD license, which allows us to use Sparrow as long as the copyright notice, the list of conditions, and the disclaimer is distributed with the source or the application.

Note

What does this mean if we were to modify the source code?

The modified source code must have the same LICENSE.md file and the contents of this file are not allowed to change.

What does this mean if we were to develop a game with Sparrow and distribute the game on the Apple App Store?

The game needs to have the contents of LICENSE.md present in the game itself. Having the contents of the file in the options or credits screen is a valid solution.