Chapter 1, Thanks for the Memory Game, covers the design and building of a memory tile game. It covers basic concepts such as grid layouts, using cocos2d actions, and using CocosDenshion for sound effects.

Chapter 2, Match 3 and Recursive Methods, walks through the design and building of a match-3 game. This chapter covers two different approaches to checking for matches, as well as an extensive section on predictive matching and how to generate artificial randomness.

Chapter 3, Thumping Moles for Fun, provides the basic concepts of how to design a mole thumping game. This game uses Z-ordering to "trick the eye", and uses cocos2d actions extensively to give a very polished game with very little coding needed.

Chapter 4, Give a Snake a Snack..., follows the design and building of a snake game. Some of the topics covered in this chapter include overriding methods, making sprites follow each other, and implementing increasing difficulty levels.

Chapter 5, Brick Breaking Balls with Box2D, covers the building of a brick-breaking game using the Box2D physics engine. In this chapter, you will find a basic primer on how to use Box2D, using plists to store level data, and implementing power-ups.

Chapter 6, Cycles of Light, takes us to an iPad only multiplayer game. This game allows two players to compete head-to-head on the same iPad, or by using GameKit's Bluetooth connectivity to play against each other on two iPads. This chapter also walks through how we can use a single pixel to draw almost everything in the game.

Chapter 7, Playing Pool, Old School, revisits the Box2D physics engine to build a top-down pool game. The focus on this chapter is to implement a simple "rules engine" into the game, as well as how to easily build multiple control methods into the same game.

Chapter 8, Shoot, Scroll, Shoot Again, walks through the building of a top-down scrolling shooter. This chapter walks you through how to use readily available outside tools and resources, including Sneaky Joystick and the Tiled tile map editor. It also covers two different forms of enemy AI, including A* Pathfinding.

Chapter 9, Running and Running and Running..., brings us to the most ambitious game of all, the endless runner. The primary topics covered are how to create random terrain that characters can walk on, parallax scrolling backgrounds, and implementing a lot of different types of enemies.

The book and code bundle contain the complete source code you will need to run all nine games. You will only need a few items to run the games:

This book is written for people who have basic experience with cocos2d, but want some guidance on how to approach real-world design issues. Although the book does revisit some basic concepts, we hit the ground running, so having a basic understanding of cocos2d is recommended. At least some knowledge of Objective-C is also strongly recommended.

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

Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."

A block of code is set as follows:

-(void) makeTransition:(ccTime)dt
{
  [[CCDirector sharedDirector] replaceScene:
     [CCTransitionFade transitionWithDuration:1.0
        scene:[MTMenuScene scene] withColor:ccWHITE]];
}

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

-(void) makeTransition:(ccTime)dt
{
  [[CCDirector sharedDirector] replaceScene:
     [CCTransitionFade transitionWithDuration:1.0
        scene:[MTMenuScene scene] withColor:ccWHITE]];
} 

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".

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