I’m happy to share my new book, Creating Games with cocos2d for iPhone 2.
Creating Games with cocos2d for iPhone 2 takes you through the entire process of designing and building nine complete games for the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad using cocos2d 2.0. The projects start simply and gradually increase in complexity, building on the lessons learned in previous chapters. Good design practices are emphasized throughout.
Why This Book Exists
I will dispense with the general marketing blurbs here. If you want to read the “official” promotional information, it is all in the first post of this forum thread.
Instead, I want to share, from a developer’s perspective, why you might want to read this book. Most developers learn the basics of cocos2d for iPhone v.2.0, and subsequently hit a wall. We have all these interesting classes that are really powerful, like CCLayer, CCSprite, actions, etc. How can we put these things together and make something equally interesting out of them?
That is the “gap” this book aims to fill. Rather than take the beginner’s book approach, where we spend several pages explaining what a sprite is, how it is drawn, etc. “Creating Games” skips many of the generalities and jumps right into the reason we are here: building games. This is the book I wished I had in hand when I was first exploring cocos2d for iPhone.
Class by class, method by method, the text explains the “good parts” of why we are building the code in this fashion. All the “good parts” are explained in detail: from building with Box2D to GameKit Bluetooth integration, and even how to build in “artificial randomness” into a Match 3 game, so you never run out of moves.
Each chapter is a complete game, and all source code is available as a download from the publisher’s web site. The games cover a wide variety of game types, and the games become more intricate and complex as the book progresses.
The games included in the book are:
Chapter 1: Memory
Chapter 2: Match 3
Chapter 3: Mole Thumper
Chapter 4: Snake
Chapter 5: Brick Breaker (with Box2D)
Chapter 6: Cycles of Light (iPad with Bluetooth integration)
Chapter 7: Pool (with Box2D)
Chapter 8: Scrolling Shooter (using Tiled)
Chapter 9: Endless Runner
Book Giveaway
We are giving away two free copies of Creating Games with cocos2d for iPhone 2! The contest runs until January 29, 2013. To enter, all you need to do is post why you want the book to the book’s forum thread. To see the particulars of the contest, read this post: Book Giveaway