If you've ever wanted to know what goes on in a great game from start to finish, this book will guide you through that process. You will discover that your games are just a few steps away from becoming the best games possible.
You'll be guided through a project and see what makes a game stand out when hundreds, or even thousands, of similar games fail to make any lasting impact. You'll experience the simplicity of Cocos2d, Chipmunk, OALSimpleAudio, and much more. You'll be given code for some unique game mechanics that will make your game stand out from the masses. This book ensures that no matter what scale of game you're working on is—whether it is indie or for a large publisher—you'll get the skills you need to create a highly polished and enjoyable experience for your players.
Chapter 1, Refreshing Your Cocos2d Knowledge, describes some tools you can use when developing your Cocos2d game, how to create an Apple Developer account, and also the importance of setting flexible goals when designing your project.
Chapter 2, Failing Faster with Prototypes, talks about the need for fast iterations and getting things up and running quickly. This chapter sets up the initial outline, or wireframe, for the book's project and goes into detail about using some of the tools introduced in the first chapter.
Chapter 3, Focusing on Physics, introduces the Chipmunk physics engine and the power behind it with only a few lines of code. This chapter shows you how you can integrate touch controls, physics, and the accelerometer all within a single project with ease.
Chapter 4, Sound and Music, covers the addition of sound and music, which are integral to a gaming experience. This chapter explains how to best use OALSimpleAudio and the various ways you can use sound within your game.
Chapter 5, Creating Cool Content, shows the use of particle effects, Bézier curves, and parallax scrolling. This chapter has three mini projects as well as some additions to this book's main project.
Chapter 6, Tidying Up and Polishing, explains the important process of polishing your game. There are many topics in this chapter, ranging from button animations to graphical changes. It explains in depth what you can do to make your game progress from a concept to a finished product.
Chapter 7 , Reaching Our Destination, finalizes the book's project and prepares everything for launch, including the creation of the app on iTunes Connect, setting up the loading screen and app icon, and adding analytics. This chapter also covers how to actually submit the game to the App Store and what to do after you submit it.
Chapter 8, Exploring Swift, introduces the Swift programming language (and the use of Swift with Cocos2d) through the creation of a very simple game. This chapter also explains the basics of how Swift works and the main differences between Swift and Objective-C.
Chapter 9, Simple Swift App, covers the basics of creating a nongame app using Swift as the main language. Although this chapter is not available in the book, it is available for download at https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/6718OS_Chapter9.pdf.
Before reading this book, you should be armed with an understanding of how Cocos2d and Objective-C work. There is a brief introduction to Cocos2d concepts early on, but it wraps up quickly.
Besides that, anything used within the book is accompanied by a proper explanation on how to get it—whether that means downloading and installing a tool, setting up an account on iTunes Connect, or using the assets provided with this book.
This book is aimed at developers who have a good handle on Cocos2d and Objective-C and want to take their game development skills to the next level. Maybe you've made games in the past that didn't get many downloads, and you want to create a higher-quality game. This book will help you polish your game to achieve what it deserves.
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: "If you do not see the .xcodepoj file extension, don't worry. It should be labelled as the Xcode project in the kind filter and have a blueprint icon next to it."
A block of code is set as follows:
@interface MainScene : CCNode
{
CGSize winSize;
}
+(CCScene*)scene;
@endNew 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: "In SpriteBuilder, go to File | Publish. This will show a progress bar, and if your project is brand new, it'll go quite fast."
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