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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.26
EAN: 9781430219682
Edition: 1
ISBN: 1430219688
Label: Apress
Manufacturer: Apress
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 280
Publication Date: June 29, 2009
Publisher: Apress
Studio: Apress
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
One look at the App Store will show you just how hot iPhone games have become. Games make up over 25 percent of all apps, and over 70 percent of the apps in the App Store's Most Popular category. Surprised? Of course not! We've all filled our iPhones with games, and many of us hope to develop the next best seller.
This book is a collection of must-know information from master independent iPhone game developers. In it, you'll discover how some of the most innovative and creative game developers have made it to the pinnacle of game design and profitability. This book is loaded with practical tips for efficient development, and for creating compelling, addictive gaming experiences. And it's not all talk! It's supported with code examples that you can download and use to realize your own great ideas.
This book's authors are responsible for some of the all-time most popular and talked-about games:
- Brian Greenstone developed Enigmo and Cro-Mag Rally.
- Aaron Fothergill developed Flick Fishing.
- Mike Lee developed Tap Tap Revolution, the most downloaded game in App Store history.
- Mike Kasprzak's Smiles was a finalist in the IGF 2009 Best Mobile Game competition.
- PJ Cabrera, Richard Zito, and Matthew Aitken (Quick Draw, Pole2Pole); Joachim Bondo (Deep Green); and Olivier Hennessy and Clayton Kane (Apache Lander) have received glowing reviews and accolades for their games.
Pair iPhone Games Projects with Apress's best-selling Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK, and you'll have everything you need to create the next game to top the sales charts.
What you'll learn - How to optimize games using iPhone SDK tools such as Instruments and Shark, and how to optimize your graphics and sound files for the best performance
- Insight into the art and craft of game design
- How to implement social networking in your game with RESTful web services
- Tips on rapid game development with C on iPhone
- How to increase your market by developing games that run on iPhone, Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows
- How to create multiplayer iPhone games
Who is this book for?
All iPhone game developers, and anyone with an iPhone who wants to learn how games are made
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
This book is intended for advanced programmers who want to improve the design, development and optimization of games beautiful, functional and appealing for iPhone by following the advice of professionals who suggest topics of various kinds are dictated by their experience.
For a beginner will be an enjoyable read but for those with more experience will prove to be a tool essential to optimize their game in all phases of processing.
Maybe I would have preferred less rambling and more code but I'm very happy with this purchase. I also saved a lot of money with the exchange rate between euro and dollar. Excellent!
P.S.
It would be nice that in the near future U.S. publishers translating these books in Italian.
Rating:  -
iPhone game developers share their techniques and secrets in IPHONE GAMES PROJECTS, a survey of the most popular games and how they were created. Tips for game development and the iPhone environment accompany insights on optimizing games, using social gaming web services, and creating multiplayer iPhone games. A technical yet top pick for any library strong in iPhone or games programming specifics.
Rating:  -
I was about to order this book as required reading for my game design class. We will build iPhone games this spring, and enrollment so far is off the charts. Regrettably, I discovered that one of the chapters uses gender exploitative games to illustrate a point that could have been made with less offensive materials. As a woman who has taught computer science for 30 years I thought the industry was beyond this sort of childishness. The chapter authors justify inclusion of this game as "a typical bar game." That the editors did not flag this is indicative of an industry that remains clueless about the potential for woman consumers in the handheld industry. For shame. While other chapters are outstanding, and informative, and exactly what I need to illustrate key points of design, I cannot in good conscience ask my students to purchase this book while trying to promote a "safe zone" in my classes. I hope the editors replace the offensive pictures and references to the offensive game in later editions.
Rating:  -
I had look at this book on amazon before and decided not to buy it because of all the negative reviews. When I finally saw this book in my local book store, I thought I'd take a peek. I thought it was rather interesting, a lot more promising than most reviews gave it credit for anyway. So I ordered it, but had very little time to read through it. A few weeks after I had it, I had a real problem on the Iphone game I was working with, long story short : after adding sounds and trying the game out on my ipod instead of the iphone it was crashing because of lack of memory. Turns out there's a nice chapter about optimization in one of these chapters that really helped me out. Instead of hunting the internet for different tips and tricks, I read the chapter in 15-20 min which covered sounds and images optimization plus the tools used for profiling the iphone sdk. The book payed for itself that very night.
There's many books that take the approach of multiple authors with each their own tips and stories. Maybe these stories in this weren't as pertinent for people as the GPU gems, or game programing gem. Me on the other hand, I try to get all the information I can get, especially from successful game makers. From Game Developer Magazine, to Gamasutra, post-mortem are a very important aspect of my learning process for creating better games. This book was no exception.
Rating: -
Note: For the sake of full disclosure, let me state that I offered to review the book and I was sent a PDF copy.
The short review: This is a good book full of interesting nuggets of information from people who have written iPhone games. This is NOT a "how to program iPhone games" book. If that's what you are looking for, you will be very disappointed as some of the other reviewers were.
The longer review:
I really enjoyed the information presented in the book. The information presented is not unlike sitting around with a bunch of programmers and asking them for mini lessons and tips. You're not going to build any projects from start to finish, and each chapter is a separate chunk of information.
That being said, you're going to get a lot of exposure to code snippets and general ideas. The chapter on RESTful web services shows you how this approach is incorporated into a game project. There's a great chapter on how to design games, not from a programming perspective, but from a general design perspective. There's an interesting chapter on code optimization and how to use shark to do profiling.
The topics presented are a loose collective of general tidbits all falling under the concept of iPhone game programming. It's almost like you went to a conference and these were a handful of random sessions that you sat in on.
I would have given the book five stars it it was a little more code-centric. After all, I'd like a bit more of a take-away besides the intangibles presented. I'm sure I'm going to apply these concepts once I find the game programming book that actually teaches me game programming theory and practice.
If you like this book, I *highly* recommend "iPhone Cool Projects". It's more code-centric than this one, but still has that loose feel that lets you jump into any chapter out of order.
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