Chapter 3. SpriteKit and 2D Game Design

Now that we understand the basics of coding in Swift, the generic flow and class structure of an iOS app, as well as the optional structuring of apps with storyboards and segues, we can move on to transforming our apps into playable games.

For this chapter, we will begin with the 2D game design and game development framework created exclusively by Apple for iOS game developers known as SpriteKit. SpriteKit first became available with iOS 7 to help simplify the game development process for the family of iOS devices. The framework runs a typical rendering loop to draw and update 2D objects/sprites to your game's scene. There's much going on behind the scenes to run this loop and draw your game sprites. Thankfully, Apple built the first party game development frameworks to do much of the heavy lifting for us. This way, we can focus more on making the game itself without worrying too much about how that game will connect and run with...