iPhone Game Development: Part 1

What I've accomplished so far...

Are you looking for some tips on getting started in iPhone/iPod game development? I spent countless hours scouring the web for relevant websites, articles and tutorials to get me started and I want to share them with you to save you precious time. I'm relatively new to Objective C programming and the XCode IDE (Apple's official tool for Mac OS and iPhone application development) so please bear with me.

Get the necessary tools

You'll need to have at least Apple's Leopard OS (10.5.6) in order for you to download and install the dev tools. Register an account on Apple's dev center and download the iPhone SDK (now on version 3.0) and XCode suite. It's a huge 2GB file so hit the download button, grab some snacks and watch a movie from iTunes for a while.

Looking at developing games for iPhone?

You're in luck! A free robust graphics library is available on the web and its called Cocos 2D. Cocos 2D lets you do all the nifty graphic tricks like transparency, rotation, movement, collision detection, etc. in a jiffy and lets you focus your time on designing games instead. There are a lot of games on the AppStore that uses Cocos 2D and the library has a great online devevelopment community. There are also other graphics library available out there but so far, I found Cocos 2D to be the most popular and has a substantial following.

Getting started

Now that you've seen Cocos 2D, you can get some hands-on with it by starting with basic tutorials on setting up a new project, creating scenes and layers and compiling and testing your game on the iPhone simulator. Keith Peters has created a few (and highly informative) articles on getting started with Cocos 2D--check it out here. After finishing the four tutorials, you should be able to create a lay-out of your new game and acquire some basic knowledge on how an iPhone app works. If you get stuck, feel free to browse Cocos 2D for iPhone's online community.

I was able to create the lay-out for my game and I'm now looking for more resources on how I can do some advanced tricks and techniques. I'll also share my source code when its finished so everyone can learn from it. For the meantime, feel free to send in your questions and I'll be glad to help out! Watch this space for the next part!