What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Sparrow, shows us how to set up Xcode, Sparrow, and our game template that we will use throughout the book. This chapter also sets up our goals and expectations for the kind of game we will develop.

Chapter 2, Displaying Our First Objects, explains the concept of display objects, which we need to achieve in order to get anything to show up on the screen, and how to manipulate these objects.

Chapter 3, Managing Assets and Scenes, introduces us to the concepts of scene and asset management and how to implement them for our purposes.

Chapter 4, The Basics of Our Game, deals with setting up our game to work on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad in the same manner. We will also create the game skeleton in this chapter.

Chapter 5, Beautifying Our Game, covers moving and animating our entities on the screen. We will also learn how to generate sprite sheets, what to consider when using sprite sheets, and how to integrate them into our game.

Chapter 6, Adding Game Logic, focuses on getting actual gameplay into our game as well as managing our game-relevant data in separate files.

Chapter 7, User Interface, shows us how to implement the user interface in our game, for example, displaying text on the screen, structuring our user interface, and updating the user interface to what is currently happening in the game.

Chapter 8, Artificial Intelligence and Game Progression, explains what we need to know in order to implement basic artificial intelligence and how we need to apply this for our enemies in the game.

Chapter 9, Adding Audio to Our Game, covers loading audio and how to integrate them in our game.

Chapter 10, Polishing Our Game, deals with adding the last 10 percent to our game. We are going to add a main menu, an intro, and tutorial mechanics for a smoother game experience.

Chapter 11, Integrating Third-party Services, takes a look at how we could integrate third-party services such as Apple Game Center in the hope of improving our players' experience.