Book Image

Mastering iOS Game Development

By : Peter Ahlgren, Miguel DeQuadros
Book Image

Mastering iOS Game Development

By: Peter Ahlgren, Miguel DeQuadros

Overview of this book

iOS is an operating system for Apple manufactured phones and tablets. Mobile gaming is one of the fastest-growing industries, and compatibility with iOS is now becoming the norm for game developers. SpriteKit is part of the native SDK from Apple, and enables developers to make simple entry into game development without unnecessary overhead and a long learning process. SpriteKit also provides other functionality that is useful for games, including basic sound playback support and physics simulation. In addition, Xcode provides built-in support for SpriteKit so that you can create complex special effects and texture atlases directly in Xcode. This combination of framework and tools makes SpriteKit a good choice for games and other apps that require similar kinds of animation. Become a master in iOS game development through this fast and fun guide! In the beginning, we’ll tell you everything you need to plan and design your game. You’ll then start developing your game through step-by-step instructions using the various built-in technologies of Xcode. From there on, we discuss how to deploy your game to the iOS App Store, as well as monetizing it to make more revenue. You will also learn advanced techniques to improve your game playing experience, including better multi-tasking, improved performance optimization, battery management, and more. To end the book off, we’ll show you how to update your game with different features, then port the update to the App Store.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Multiplayer integration


I'm sure all of us remember sitting down in front of our old CRT TV with a friend and loading up Super Mario 3 (blowing on the cartridge before inserting it to ensure that it works) and playing together for hours on end.

Then, the split screen multiplayer was introduced and that blew everyone's minds. "We can play together at the same time? We don't have to take turns? Awesome sauce!"

Now, we are in the age of Bluetooth/online multiplayer games. No more are we sitting down with friends in the same room to play our games; no, we are antisocial now. That's not an issue though; it does leave a smaller mess to clean up when you're done playing. This is what will integrate—multiplayer with matchmaking—and it will be so cool!

In order to do this, however, we do need to enable and integrate Game Center into our game. To start doing this, let's open up our project in Xcode. With our project selected on the left-hand side, click on the Capabilities tab in the center of the screen...