iOS Graphics programming

[wlh99]

After years of not programming much, I recently jumped into the Mac and iPhone. It didn't take much to get up to speed and feel comfortable.

However, I have never done any game or graphics programming. What is a good resource for that? Are there 3d libraries available for the iPhone, or do game developers roll their own rendering engine?

I assume that the concepts are the same on any platform. Is there a good platform independant primer on 3d graphics?

 

[PhoneyDeveloper]

I'm not a games programmer but have a few comments.

For some games UIKit and core animation are sufficient. Core animation does have a lot of capabilities for moving things on screen, visual transformations and so forth.

For maximum framerate I think most developers use OpenGL. There is an embedded version of this called OpenGL-ES that is available on the iPhone OS. OpenGL is cross-platform and you can find books and tutorials and sample code on the net.

 

[dejo]

If you're looking for a 3D game engine for the iPhone, check out Unity. Pricey but seems pretty powerful.

 

[mccannmarc]

If you're looking for a 3D game engine for the iPhone, check out Unity. Pricey but seems pretty powerful.

You're right, Its brilliant. It has cross platform support too so with little effort on your part you could release your title on iPhone, Mac OSX, Windows and even the Wii. Another alternative is Torque which can do all of the above as well as on the Xbox360.

Where 2D is concerned you can't get much better value than cocos2d, its free and pretty powerful. There are 2D versions of unity and Torque as well that wipe the floor with cocos2d but they will significantly impact on your wallet and are not worth investing in until you know what you are doing where games are concerned.

Word to the wise to the OP - Hold back on 3D programming until you have sufficiently mastered 2D. Adding that extra Z axis makes a massive difference to the complexity of even the most basic of games. My advice is get a copy of cocos2d and get a feel for how game programming works