Chapter 1, Sprites and Animations, teaches you how to draw sprites in a scene, add colored sprites, and render 2D shapes using primitives. This chapter will also show you how to animate sprites, move sprites, add different kinds of actions to a sprite, and also look at the parallax effect to create a more dynamic scene.

Chapter 2, Scenes and Menus, will cover how to add scenes to the game, such as a gameplay scene, how to create buttons and labels in the scene, and how to create transitions between the scenes using various transition effects.

Chapter 3, Gestures, Touches, and the Accelerometer, will discuss various methods of user interaction, such as tapping, holding, swiping along with adding accelerometer inputs and gestures to the scene.

Chapter 4, Physics, will provide examples of how to add physics to the scene and make objects respond to physics. This chapter will also look at different body types and body properties, adding sprites to a body, applying force and impulse to a body, detecting collision responses, and building objects, such as a vehicle, by adding physics bodies together.

Chapter 5, Audio, will show you how to edit audio tracks to create music and sound effects, add the background music and audio effects to the game, add a pause and resume button to the game, and add a volume slider to control the volume of audio to the options menu.

Chapter 6, AI and A* Pathfinding, will include ways to add Artificial Intelligence to enemies in the game. This chapter will also look at creating patrolling, chasing, and projectile shooting enemies. It will cover a pathfinding to create more advanced AI logic for enemies using grids.

Chapter 7, Data Storage and Retrieval, will teach you how to save and load game progress on the device using NSUserDefault, create and access files using JSON, Plist, and XML files, for custom storage and retrieval of data.

Chapter 8, Effects, teaches you to add dynamic lighting to your game, manipulate the position and color of the light source dynamically using touch controls, and add 2D shadows to the game created by the light source. You will learn to add effects to the game using the CCEffects class of Cocos2d to create interesting effects in the game.

Chapter 9, Game Tools, provides insights to using industry standard tools, such as TexturePacker, Glyph Designer, PhysicsEditor, Particle Designer, and Sprite Illuminator, to create more visually appealing and performance-optimized games.

Chapter 10, Swift/SpriteBuilder Basics, shows you how to develop games in Apple's latest programming language, Swift. We will see the differences between Objective-C and Swift in this chapter. We will also see how to import Objective-C classes into Swift to reduce the redundancy of code. This chapter will also provide insight into using SpriteBuilder to develop more robust games.

Chapter 11, Porting to Android, will take a look at how to take your existing game developed for iOS and port it to Android. We will learn how to install the Android Xcode plugin, prepare the device for deployment, and finally run the project on an Android device.

To develop games using Cocos2d, all you need is the latest version of OSX El Capitan, SpriteBuilder, and Xcode. All these applications are available in the Apple App Store and are free to download. The recipes in this book are designed for iPads, so iPad 3 onwards can be used for testing purposes. To develop on Android, an Android device is required. It is better to use the Galaxy or Nexus series phones as they are tried and tested.

The structure of the book is designed in such a way that it is easy to access a specific recipe and get the necessary information from it. Each recipe is self-contained and easy to follow. This book is for intermediate to advanced users who have some basic knowledge of how Cocos2d works. Although the basic concepts are covered in this book, they are not explained in depth, so some prior experience is required.

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it…, How it works…, There's more…, and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We will then create the _sprite1 and _sprite2 variables. In spriteWithImageNames, we will pass the filename variable that will hold the string of the filename."

A block of code is set as follows:

#import "CCSprite.h"

@interface ParallaxSprite :CCSprite{

  CGSize _winSize;
  CGPoint _center;
  CCSprite *_sprite1, *_sprite2;
  float _speed;
}


-(id)initWithFilename:(NSString *)filename Speed:(float)speed;
-(void)update:(CCTime)delta;

@end

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

#import "Hero.h"
#import "ParallaxSprite.h"

@interface MainScene :CCNode{

CGSizewinSize;
    Hero* hero;
ParallaxSprite* pSprite;

}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

./install.sh -i

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Next, we will give it a class name. We will select CCSprite as Subclass of and Objective–C as Language."

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.