Chapter 4. SceneKit and 3D Game Design

For this chapter, we will be going over the iOS framework used for 3D game development known as SceneKit. SceneKit first became available in iOS 7 but originally was just used for MacOS development. Previously, developers had to code 3D games using OpenGL or third-party frameworks and engines, such as Cocos3D, Unreal Engine, Havok, and Unity. As the graphical power in the iOS family of devices improved, so did the need for an immersive, hands-on first-party 3D game design engine. SceneKit shortly became available for iOS giving developers an Xcode built-in solution to make 3D games.

In the previous chapter, we approached iOS game development in a more code-based methodology. We'll still be working in some code, but since the introduction of Xcode 5 and Xcode 6, Apple has provided some great demos that show how the IDE can be just as visually dynamic of a game engine as multiplatform game engines are. The benefit of using Xcode and the...