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iOS Game Programming Cookbook
iOS Game Programming Cookbook

iOS Game Programming Cookbook: Over 45 interesting game recipes that will help you create your next enthralling game

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iOS Game Programming Cookbook

Chapter 2. SpriteKit

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

  • Learning the basics of SpriteKit – The FlyingSpaceship tutorial
  • Understanding scenes, nodes, and sprites
  • Anatomy of game projects
  • Applying actions on Sprites
  • Adding infinite scrolling
  • Moving characters

This chapter explains SpriteKit in detail. We'll start from a discussion on the basics of SpriteKit, and then we will be learning about the anatomy of the game project. Moving ahead, we will learn about scenes, sprites, and nodes. This will provide us a deeper understanding about the basic structure model of the SpriteKit. Then we will be exploring the depth of SpriteKit by adding some actions to the sprites. Moving ahead, we will be adding infinite scrolling to the game that will be created during the chapter.

Introduction

SpriteKit is a graphics rendering and animation framework with features for animating arbitrary textured images called Sprites. It has a rendering loop that renders the contents of the frame. As a process, the content of each frame (that is, input) is given, processed, and then finally rendered by the rendering loop.

Basically, your game identifies the content of the frame and how the content has to be changed in that frame.

Being a new player in the game industry, SpriteKit is doing really well as it has adopted the basics of cocos2d, which is a heavily used game engine for 2D games. It's really well written, documented, and deeply integrated with iOS. However, if you are new to the game development domain, even then this book will serve you as a starter development guide. Each chapter is baked with a recipe to make sure that you learn all the concepts of game development.

Now here are the two most basic concepts: scenes and sprites. iOS games are made up of scenes and...

Learning the basics of SpriteKit – The FlyingSpaceship tutorial

In this section we will learn and explore basic concepts of SpriteKit. We will also develop a mini game, which will help in understanding the concepts with some robust implementation. The best way to learn SpriteKit is to see it in action.

Getting ready

To build a SpriteKit game, firstly you need to understand the basic structure of a SpriteKit project. You can get started with a starter project having a SKScene and an SKNode placed on it. This would equip you with the setup to build your basic game.

How to do it...

To understand the basic concepts of game programming, let's create a new project with the SpriteKit game template with project name FlyingSpaceship. The project will demonstrate the structure of a SpriteKit project. The end goal of the project is that a Spaceship is visible on the screen and in the upcoming topics we can make it fly.

We will follow some of the same steps we performed in Chapter 1, iOS Game...

Understanding scenes, nodes, and sprites

The whole game is organized into scenes, which have the content represented by SKScene objects.

A scene is an entity that holds all the content, that is, nodes and sprites that are to be rendered. It also implements the setup or anatomy of content processing and updating each frame.

The SKScene class is a subclass of SKNode, which is the fundamental building block of SpriteKit. Every entity in SpriteKit is inherited or derived from the node (SKNode). So SKScene is the root node for other nodes, which are used to populate the content over a scene.

Similar to UIKit, each node's position is specified according to the coordinate system of its parent. A node also has the basic properties that a content item or entity should have such as moving, rotating, scaling, fading out, and many more. And most important, all node objects are responder objects that respond to the delegates of UIResponder. This is used to detect input touches to the scene for moving...

Anatomy of game projects

In this section we will see the basics of a game project. This includes understanding the basic architecture and work flow of game projects. Here we will learn about the scene and layers and their importance in games.

Getting ready

Complete game development is dependent on three core components: scenes, nodes, and sprites mentioned earlier. We need to have a command over these components to effectively start on game development.

How to do it...

Internally, the life cycle is executed as per the scenes—nodes are added and actions applied on these nodes. It also includes attaching some physics bodies to the nodes, support for cropping, applying animation and effects to all or a part of the content, detecting forces and collision, drawing in OpenGL, and many more things.

Apart from all this, there is an overridden update method in SKScene, which is called for each frame of the game with the current time interval as a parameter. There you can add your actual game logic...

Applying actions on sprites

Sprites are just static images with no life. So actions add that life to the sprites that make your game. Actions help in building the gameplay by moving sprites and animating them differently. An action is an object that makes the scene look alive.

Actions are applied on nodes and sprites, for example, we want to move some object that is a sprite, so we create a move action and run it on that sprite. SpriteKit automatically changes the sprite's position in a form of animation until the action is over.

All actions are implemented using a class called SKAction and different types of actions are instantiated using the class methods of the SKAction class provided for various animation functionality.

Here are the most common actions available in SpriteKit:

  • Applying transformation (translation, rotation, and scaling)
  • Changing visibility (fading in and fading out)
  • Changing the content of the sprite
  • Changing the colors of sprites
  • Removing sprites
  • Calling a block or a selector...

Adding infinite scrolling

Now we are all ready with our spaceship. It's time to add some more in the game. So our next target is to add infinite scrolling to the game, so that we can make our spaceship move infinitely in space. In this recipe, we will be learning about the ways to add infinite scrolling to games.

Getting ready

For an infinite scrolling background you need to know about the anatomy of SpriteKit shown earlier. You should be aware of the rendering loop, how in a particular frame the update method functions, and how SKScene evaluates the actions and physics simulation thereby rendering all the stuff in the SKView. Now using this loop, you implement sky scrolling infinitely giving the feel of a spaceship flying.

How to do it...

Now is the time for action; perform the following steps to add the infinite scrolling background to your game.

  1. Import the SpaceBackground.png file provided in the Resources folder.
  2. Add a function in FSMyScene for initializing the infinite background.
  3. In...

Introduction


SpriteKit is a graphics rendering and animation framework with features for animating arbitrary textured images called Sprites. It has a rendering loop that renders the contents of the frame. As a process, the content of each frame (that is, input) is given, processed, and then finally rendered by the rendering loop.

Basically, your game identifies the content of the frame and how the content has to be changed in that frame.

Being a new player in the game industry, SpriteKit is doing really well as it has adopted the basics of cocos2d, which is a heavily used game engine for 2D games. It's really well written, documented, and deeply integrated with iOS. However, if you are new to the game development domain, even then this book will serve you as a starter development guide. Each chapter is baked with a recipe to make sure that you learn all the concepts of game development.

Now here are the two most basic concepts: scenes and sprites. iOS games are made up of scenes and scenes...

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Description

This book is for developers who are willing to explore iOS game programming in depth. Good knowledge level and understanding of iOS game development will be an added advantage. You should already have a working installation of Xcode and Sprite kit.

Who is this book for?

This book is for developers who are willing to explore iOS game programming in depth.
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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Mar 25, 2015
Length: 300 pages
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Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781784398255
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Length: 300 pages
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ISBN-13 : 9781784398255
Vendor :
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Tools :

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Table of Contents

13 Chapters
1. iOS Game Development Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. SpriteKit Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Animations and Texture Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Particle System and Game Performance Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Adding Music to iOS Games and an Introduction to iCloud Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Physics Simulation Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Adding Reality to Games Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Introduction to Game Math and Physics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Autonomous Moving Agents Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. 3D Game Programming with OpenGL Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Getting Started with Multiplayer Games Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
12. Implementing Multiplayer Games Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.5
(4 Ratings)
5 star 0%
4 star 50%
3 star 50%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
siddharth shekar Jun 30, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
This is a very good book for beginners. The book goes in-depth into making sure that the concepts are explained in detail. Also apart from just explaining the technology the book also covers essential skills like AI programming, Physics and Multiplayer game development which are additionally required for game development. The book also touches on OpenGLES and covers in depth 3D texture mapping and animation for anyone trying to make the move from 2D to 3D game development. I heartily recommend this book anyone who are getting into iOS game development.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Mahaneesh chandra Jun 10, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
One of the best purchase of mine so far. I had plenty of doubts before purchasing this book. But the author made it easy to read and follow. Even the complicated stuffs are explained way easier. I can say the author has put lot of efforts in bringing different flavours together here to help us explore more possibilities of using iOS game features in a step by step process. A very handy book I recommend to all.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Ess Feb 23, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
Beware! The code in this book is in Objective C. So, if you're just starting out with development, chances are you want a book with code written in Swift.The book seems to have some nice features to it and the authors discuss interesting topics, however I was discouraged by seeing the choice on programming language given that Swift is the new way to go.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Bo Kalvslund May 08, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
The book uses Objective-C to my surprice - Swift is the s***.But Good book and examples
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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