Build iOS Games with Sprite Kit: Unleash Your Imagination in Two Dimensions

For beginning iOS developers who want to write games and interactive applications.

Take your game ideas from paper to pixels using Sprite Kit, Apple's 2D game development engine. Build two exciting games using Sprite Kit and learn real-world, workshop-tested insights about game design, including cognitive complexity, paper prototyping, and levels of fun. You'll learn how to implement sophisticated game features such as obstacles and weapons, power-ups and variable difficulty, physics, sound, special effects, and both single- and two-finger control. In no time, you'll be building your own thrilling iOS games.

Power up your inner game developer and start building incredible games with Sprite Kit. This book will teach you everything you need to know about Apple's 2D game engine. If you have some programming experience but you're new to game development, you'll hit the ground running, no complex tools required--just the Sprite Kit SDK.

You'll start out fast by building a single-finger infinite runner game, where the goal is to stay alive as long as possible and rack up points. You'll explore the Sprite Kit template, actions, and particle editor and watch your game take shape with an armed player ship, asteroids and enemy ships, explosions, power-ups, and variable difficulty. Then you'll stitch the game together with cutscenes, menus, and scoring.

Next, you'll build a classic pinball game with all the fun and physics of the real thing. You'll discover the powerful Sprite Kit physics engine and enhance your game with gravity, friction, ricochets, and spin physics, as well as sound effects, bonus scoring, and special effects. Plus, this game features two-finger control.

Dust off those game ideas you've been tucking away and let your imagination bring them to life. This book will show you how.

What You Need:

You need a computer running Mac OS X Mavericks and Xcode 5.

Jonathan Penn is one half of Rubber City Wizards, a software development and mentoring team. He has written his own games in Sprite Kit and also uses the framework as a prototyping and demonstration tool due to its incredible flexibility. He speaks regularly at conferences and runs workshops for prototyping and game development, helping bring cool ideas to life on these marvelous machines.

Josh Smith is one half of Rubber City Wizards, a software development and mentoring team. Josh has worked in the gaming industry using various game engines, including Cocos2D, the game engine that Apple targets directly with Sprite Kit. He speaks regularly at conferences and runs workshops for prototyping and game development, helping bring cool ideas to life on these marvelous machines.