Chapter 1, An Introduction to Sprite Kit, introduces you to the Sprite Kit game engine, along with its various elements and features. It also helps in setting up a new Xcode project for developing a Sprite Kit game.

Chapter 2, Scenes in Sprite Kit, explains an important topic in Sprite Kit, that is, scenes. Along with this, there is a brief about the node tree drawing order.

Chapter 3, Sprites, explains sprites and their properties. It also applies some of the properties in the example game.

Chapter 4, Nodes in Sprite Kit, discusses about nodes and its subclasses in detail. It also explains the implementation of various node subclasses in the example game.

Chapter 5, Physics in Sprite Kit, talks about physics simulation in a Sprite Kit game. It explains the types of physics bodies. Physics capabilities are applied to the example game in this chapter.

Chapter 6, Animating Sprites, Controls, and SceneKit, covers animating nodes and adding controls to a Sprite Kit game. These features are added in the example game. It also talks about SceneKit.

Chapter 7, Particle Effects and Shaders, discusses about particle effects and shaders, along with their implementation in the example game.

Chapter 8, Handling Multiple Scenes and Levels, helps us understand the need for different levels in a game. This chapter also explains how to create multiple scenes.

Chapter 9, Performance Enhancement and Extras, discusses in detail how to improve the performance of a Sprite Kit game, along with performance measuring using instruments. It also explains the scoring system, sound, and player running animation in the example game.

Chapter 10, Revisiting Our Game and More on iOS 9, discusses the various steps involved in the development of a game, and introduces readers to the Game Center and discusses new features that will be introduced in iOS 9.

Readers will require Xcode, which is the IDE provided by Apple for developing software, and also the sample game for Mac OS X and iOS devices. An iOS-running device will be helpful to the readers for running the example game that is being developed in the book.

This book is for beginners who want to start their game development odyssey on the iOS platform. If you are an intermediate or proficient game developer hailing from a different development platform, this book will be the perfect gateway into the Sprite Kit engine. The reader does not need to have any prior knowledge of Sprite Kit, and building games on the iOS platform.

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: "To make a sprite in a game, we have to make an instance of the SKSpriteNode class."

A block of code is set as follows:

init(name: String){
  //it is designated initializer . initialization part

}
convenience init(){
  //Calling the Designated Initializer in same class
  self.init(name: "Hello")
}

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: "Untick the Portrait checkbox and tick Landscape Left under the Device Orientation section."

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