Learning iOS Game Programming: A Hands-On Guide to Building Your First

More about Learning iOS Game Programming: A Hands-On Guide to Building Your First iPhone Game [Paperback]

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Customer Reviews

Having nearly finished the book I thought it would be a good idea to write a review.
Reading the last review I felt even more compelled to write my own. The last reviewer really hasn't got a clue about what this book is about! He tries to pitch it as a book that covers many different technologies in great detail and fails. There is a note on the first page of chapter 2 that tells that totally contradicts what he says.
Note
It is not intended that this book will teach you how to develop in Objective-C or C or teach you everything you need to know about the other technologies in their own right; there are many excellent books and online resources that cover OpenGL and OpenAL in greater detail. We will however cover these topics in enough detail to allow you to understand why we are using them and how.
Thats what I love about this book! It tells you how to write an entire game from start to finish and doesn't bore you with incredibly complex algorithms or low level code or the ins and outs of every technology.
As for the game engine you write, it's very modular so you can include only the bits you need in your game. I wanted to recreate the JetPack game I played when I was younger. With this book I'm well on the way. It's saved me a huge amount of time trying to learn from other resources on the net.
Their forum and blog is quite active too, I've posted a few questions and they've answered promptly.

Poorly edited. Many of the text references to the code use the wrong method names or quote the wrong lines of code altogether. It is absolutely essential to download the source code; there were many occasions where I found it necessary to look at more of the source than was printed in the book to understand what the text was saying. If you are willing to spend the time to sort out these problems, the book is otherwise not bad. The design of the game engine seems solid. The reader definitely needs to have at least a passing acquaintance with Objective C to understand the book. I am revising my previous 2-star review to 3 stars since the book is definitely useful in spite of its flaws. This review is based on the Kindle edition.

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