Book Image

Swift Game Development - Third Edition

By : Siddharth Shekar, Haney
Book Image

Swift Game Development - Third Edition

By: Siddharth Shekar, Haney

Overview of this book

Swift is the perfect choice for game development. Developers are intrigued by Swift and want to make use of new features to develop their best games yet. Packed with best practices and easy-to-use examples, this book leads you step by step through the development of your first Swift game. The book starts by introducing Swift's best features – including its new ones for game development. Using SpriteKit, you will learn how to animate sprites and textures. Along the way, you will master physics, animations, and collision effects and how to build the UI aspects of a game. You will then work on creating a 3D game using the SceneKit framework. Further, we will look at how to add monetization and integrate Game Center. With iOS 12, we see the introduction of ARKit 2.0. This new version allows us to integrate shared experiences such as multiplayer augmented reality and persistent AR that is tied to a specific location so that the same information can be replicated on all connected devices. In the next section, we will dive into creating Augmented Reality games using SpriteKit and SceneKit. Then, finally, we will see how to create a Multipeer AR project to connect two devices, and send and receive data back and forth between those devices in real time. By the end of this book, you will be able to create your own iOS games using Swift and publish them on the iOS App Store.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
19
Index

Polling for device movement with Core Motion


Apple provides the Core Motion framework to expose precise information on the iOS device's orientation in physical space. We can use this data to move our player on the screen when the user tilts their device in the direction they want to move. This unique style of input offers new gameplay mechanics in mobile games.

You will need a physical iOS device for this Core Motion section. The iOS simulator in Xcode does not simulate device movement. However, this section is only a learning exercise and is not required to finish the game we are building. Our final game will not use Core Motion. Feel free to skip the Core Motion section if you cannot test with a physical device.

Implementing the Core Motion code

It is very easy to poll for device orientation. We will check the device's position during every update and apply the appropriate force to our player. Follow these steps to implement the Core Motion controls:

  1. In GameScene.swift, near the very top,...