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iOS Getting started developing games

teek

teek

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 12, 2008
88
0
Norway
I want to write a game, I'm thinking something easy at first, maybe a spaceship at the bottom shooting whatever is thrown at it and maybe a scrolling background so it looks like the spaceship moves.

Where do I start? I have NO clue whatsoever how to go about doing this.
How do I handle background (scenery) scrolling, etc.

Anyone know of a tutorial to get me started?
 
Games are very difficult to write and you can end up spending a long long time just to learn enough to blit a sprite to the screen.

I'm assuming you are wanting to learn iPhone programming so there are a few paths I can suggest:

Suggestion A: Programming.
1. Learn Objective C
2. Learn Cocoa
3. Work through the iPhone developer tutorials to learn Cocoa Touch

The above three are a lot more work then I made them sound. You have to be very proficient at the above three.

Suggestion B: Scripting
Buy a game engine such as Unity 3D and learn to script with it and you will be able to make a game fairly fast provided you have the ability to develop your own art assets. Unity is an EXCELLENT piece of software.

Suggestion C: A Game Maker
I would suggest this if you have no programming experience what-so-ever. Something like Game Salad would be able to do what you are looking for I believe and it is pretty good to use since you can see what goes into making a game without dealing too much with code.


Aside from all that other posters will probably ask the following:

1. How much programming experience do you have?
2. How much time are you willing to spend on programming?
3. Are you able to create art assets with Maya or Photoshop or something similar?
 
I myself would like to get into game development. I have a bit of experience with iphone dev with my current apps but I am not sure where to begin with game development. Standards and what not for coding a game. If there were any good tutorials out there on game development I would love to see them.
 
chrono1081 said:
Games are very difficult to write and you can end up spending a long long time just to learn enough to blit a sprite to the screen.

I'm assuming you are wanting to learn iPhone programming so there are a few paths I can suggest:

Suggestion A: Programming.
1. Learn Objective C
2. Learn Cocoa
3. Work through the iPhone developer tutorials to learn Cocoa Touch

--SNIP--

Aside from all that other posters will probably ask the following:

1. How much programming experience do you have?
2. How much time are you willing to spend on programming?
3. Are you able to create art assets with Maya or Photoshop or something similar?
Click to expand...


Thanks for your reply.

I do have a lot of experience as a Java programmer but C/Objective-C is a different matter (especially concerning memory management).
I've had a "break" from programming, been doing other things for the last 3-4 years and I want to get back in the game by learning something new which is Objective-C and Game programming.
I have no experience whatsoever writing Games or doing graphics programming. Business apps and Utilities, sure, no problem.
I think I'm looking for "best practices" and "how-to" type of books for game programming. I just don't want to re-invent the wheel here and I'm sure there's tons of good books and tutorials out there. Just trying to figure out which one to start with.
 
I am soon going in to a game development program and their program gives out PCs to the coders so I was wondering if there is much promise in using say a MBP or Mac Pro (I don't have a Mac Pro now but I would love a professional reason to get a Mac Pro at some point). I don't mind using windows but I really would prefer to use both Mac hardware and OSX for the majority of my work, but I am just not sure if thats going to be possible either during my two years getting my BS or afterwards. If I were going in to more the video editing field I could see using Macs pretty much full time not being much of a problem. But on the programming side (and while I have no formal training in either I think I have a much better knack at programming than with the art side, since I am ok in photoshop but I cannot draw with pen and paper to save my life.

Anyone have any input on that.
 
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