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iOS Where to go next? (in learning)

J

JonnyThunder

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 16, 2008
67
0
Hello,

I'm serious about learning game programming on the iPhone. At the start of July I took three months off full time employment to study. I've reached the end of the iPhone books and although I can write applications, the books don't really cover that much on games / animation.

So far, I've worked through the following books...


Alongside this, I've read the official getting started guides to Objective-C by Apple, and some random tutorials. The problem is, these mostly cover application design. So... my question is this. Can anyone recommend further reading specifically aimed at game design / game animation for iPhone? Or any further books which can bring me up to the level where writing games may make a little more sense?

I have two months left, and would like to begin the design phases of some of the ideas I've had. They aren't complicated ideas, and are all 2D games.

Any ideas would be appreciated!

Thanks,
JT
 
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If you've gone through those books completely and understand many/most of the concepts then I would start implementing something.

If you have several ideas for games then pick one idea and implement a part of it. This could easily take a month or longer. You'll learn a lot. Your learning will be more directed. Also, many of the example apps leave out the details that a real finished app needs. By building something more real you'll get the chance to complete something.
 
work on a project.
then make
some more apps.
put them on App store and earn money.

when you have several apps,
then make a portfolio.
and get a job at some programming company. :eek:
 
That's my point though - see, take the last book for example. The only real chapter about Quartz / OpenGL shows how to build a simple app drawing lines and circles. What it doesn't show you (in any part of the book) is the use of images for animation, collision detection and all the rest of those things which make up (some) games.

Are there any further books I can get hold of which may explain some of these things? How does everyone else learn these things on the iPhone, if not from books?
 
I'm in the same boat as you. I'm a application developper and want to make simple 2D games to something different than PHP and Applications.

I'm learning OpenGL. You can make games with other platforms but this is the best one to get a decent framerate. It's what I saw suggested the most while looking for what to learn.

Btw, except the first one, we've read the same books.
 
Where to go next?

Write code

After you write some, you know more about what you don't know, and you can go read and study some more.

Rinse and repeat.


imho.
 
Thanks for the replies.

alexandergre said:
I just saw this:
http://icodeblog.com/2009/07/24/iphone-programming-tutorial-animating-a-game-sprite/
Click to expand...

Yes, I saw this yesterday too - and started to write a simple sprite test app using the Ryu sprite sheet.

The whole thing is pretty daunting when you don't know where to start. And with all due respect, it's very well saying "write code" - but when you're not sure where to start, that's quite a tall order.

I guess I'll do what I've been doing already and play about until something falls into place. If anyone has any recommendations about books on game process design or anything useful which is iPhone specific then please post.
 
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