Build iOS 8 Games with Sprite Kit: Unleash Your Imagination in Two Dimensions - Softcover

Take your game ideas from paper to pixels using Sprite Kit, Apple's 2D game development engine. Build two exciting games using Sprite Kit - in both Swift and Objective C - and learn real-world, workshop-tested insights about game design, including cognitive complexity, paper prototyping, and levels of fun. Fully updated for iOS 8, this book shows you 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. Completely updated for iOS 8, this book teaches you everything you need to know about Apple's 2D game engine. 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 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. 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, fields, and spin physics, as well as sound effects, bonus scoring, special effects, and two-finger control.

Both games are written in Objective C and Swift, Apple's new programming language. This new edition covers Xcode 6's Level Designer, which makes creating your game even faster and easier.

Let your imagination bring your game ideas to life. This book will show you how.

Josh Smith is a writer, pretend cartographer, and developer with AllTrails. He has 17 years of professional IT experience, and teaches game development workshops and other topics at CocoaConf in various cities around the country. He lives, works, and occasionally builds robots in Pittsburgh, PA.