Learn Cocos2d 2: Game Development for iOS

Steffen Itterheim & Andreas Löw

Language: English

Publisher: Apress

Published: Sep 19, 2012

Description:

Create compelling 2D games with Learn cocos2d 2: Game Development with iOS. This book shows you how to use the powerful new cocos2d, version 2 game engine to develop games for iPhone and iPad with tilemaps, virtual joypads, Game Center, and more.  It teaches you:

  • The process and best practices of mobile game development, including sprite batching, texture atlases, parallax scrolling, touch and accelerometer input.
  • How to enhance your games using the Box2D and Chipmunk physics engines and other cocos2d-related tools and libraries.
  • How to add UIKit views to cocos2d and how to add cocos2d to UIKit apps.
  • The ins and outs of the Kobold2D development environment for cocos2d and its pre-configured libraries, including cocos3d and Lua.

Best of all, this book will have you making games right from the very start. It guides you step-by-step through the creation of sample games. These fun examples are modeled after popular App Store games and teach you key concepts of the new cocos2d 2 game engine and relevant tools like TexturePacker (texture atlas), PhysicsEditor (physics collision shapes), Particle Designer (particle effects), Glyph Designer (bitmap fonts), and others.

This book offers a rock-solid introduction to creating games made entirely with cocos2d and little or no iOS SDK and OpenGL code. It also details alternative implementations, identifies the best free and commercial tools for cocos2d game development, features coverage of the author’s improved cocos2d game engine (Kobold2D), and even helps you enhance your game’s marketability on the App Store.

What you’ll learn

  • The process and best practices of mobile game development, including sprite batching, texture atlases, parallax scrolling, touch and accelerometer input.
  • How to enhance your games using the Box2D and Chipmunk physics engines and other cocos2d-related tools and libraries.
  • How to add UIKit views to cocos2d and how to add cocos2d to UIKit apps.
  • The ins and outs of the Kobold2D development environment for cocos2d and its pre-configured libraries, including cocos3d and Lua.

Who this book is for

The book is aimed at beginning game developers looking for an easier and even more powerful way to create compelling 2D graphics using OpenGL and Objective-C. It is assumed that the reader will have some knowledge of object-oriented programming and the Apple and iPhone/iPad developer environment.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Getting Started
  3. Essentials
  4. Your First Game
  5. Game Building Blocks
  6. Sprites In-Depth
  7. Scrolling with Joy
  8. Shoot ’em Up
  9. Particle Effects
  10. Working with Tilemaps
  11. Isometric Tilemaps
  12. Physics Engines
  13. Pinball Game
  14. Game Center
  15. Best Tools for cocos2d Development
  16. Kobold2D Fundamentals
  17. Out of the Ordinary

About the Author

Steffen Itterheim is a professional games and tools developer. He has worked for Electronic Arts Phenomic for the past seven years. Be it scripting, programming, or foreign languages, he's done it all. He has extensive experience with game localization including non-western languages and locales, and he also knows the Lua scripting language inside and out. He learned English by watching too much American television. Steffen currently lives in Ingelheim, Germany.

Andreas Löw has been a computer freak since he got is first Commodore C16 at the age of 10. Teaching himself how to write games, he released his first computer game, Gamma Zone, for Commodore Amiga in 1994, written in pure assembly language. After his diploma in electrical engineering he worked for Harman International in the department for navigation and infotainment systems with speech recognition. He invented his own programming language and compiler system which is used in many cars with speech recognition technology around the world.  With the iPhone, he found his way back to his roots and began developing a game called TurtleTrigger. He realized there is a lack of  good tools in the cocos2d community. He founded CodeAndWeb and now dedicates his full time to this new challenge. With his knowledge in both game and tool development, his products TexturePacker and PhysicsEditor quickly became essential development tools for any cocos2d user.