2D iOS & tvOS Games by Tutorials Now Available!

Note from Ray: Happy Wednesday – it’s book release day during the iOS 9 Feast!

Today we are happy to release our brand new book 2D iOS & tvOS Games by Tutorials.

In this book, you will learn how to make iOS and tvOS games in Swift using Apple’s built-in 2D game framework: Sprite Kit. Through a series of mini-games and challenges, you will go from beginner to advanced and learn everything you need to make your own game.

Keep reading to learn more about the history of the book, what’s inside, and how you can get your copy!

History of This Book

Two years ago, we wrote a book called iOS Games by Tutorials, covering how to make 2D games with Sprite Kit. One year later, we released a second edition fully ported to Swift, as a free update for existing customers.

Then this year at WWDC, one of the biggest and most exciting changes announced was the new GameplayKit APIs. These are a set of APIs that make it easy to add pathfinding, AI, and other cool features into your games.

Then there was the elephant in the room – the announcement of tvOS, which now allows us to create games for the living room!

These changes were so significant that rather than trying to give them a token coverage in an update to iOS Games by Tutorials, we decided it would be better to revamp the book completely. Enter 2D iOS & tvOS Games by Tutorials!

2D iOS & tvOS Games by Tutorials teaches you everything you need to know about SpriteKit, GameplayKit, and related APIs like Game Center and ReplayKit. The book contains the classic games Zombie Conga, Cat Nap, and Circuit Racer (with plenty of updates along the way), but also introduces three new games to highlight the power of GameplayKit:

• Drop Charge: Escape from an exploding alien spaceship, learning about the scene editor, juice, and GamePlayKit state machines along the way!
• Dino Defense: Protect your village from an onslaught of dinosaurs in this tower defense game with GamePlayKit pathfinding and entity/component system!
• Delve: Try to find your way through a procedurally-generated dungeon before you are destroyed by hordes of monsters!

This book is not a free update since over half of the book is completely new; it’s closer to a new book than an update. However, I sent a coupon for 50% off to former iOS Games by Tutorials PDF customers to thank you for your support – check your email and enjoy!

What’s Inside

2D iOS & tvOS Games by Tutorials is 29 chapters and 801 pages – yeah, it’s pretty huge :]

The book is split into five sections, moving from beginning to advanced topics. In each section, you will create a complete mini-game, from scratch! The book also includes some bonus chapters at the end that we think you’ll enjoy.

Let’s take a look at what’s inside!

Section I: Getting Started

This section covers the basics of making 2D games with Sprite Kit. These are the most important techniques, the ones you’ll use in almost every game you make. By the time you reach the end of this section, you’ll be ready to make your own simple game.

Throughout this section you will create an action game called Zombie Conga, where you take the role of a happy-go-lucky zombie who just wants to party!

You will build this game across seven chapters, in stages:

1. Chapter 1, Sprites: Get started by adding your first sprites to the game: the background and the zombie.
2. Chapter 2, Manual Movement: You’ll make the zombie follow your touches around the screen and get a crash-course in basic 2D vector math.
3. Chapter 3, Actions: You’ll add cats and crazy cat ladies to the game, as well as basic collision detection and gameplay.
4. Chapter 4, Scenes: You’ll add a main menu to the game, as well as win and lose scenes.
5. Chapter 5, Camera: You’ll make the game scroll from left to right, and finally, add the conga line itself.
6. Chapter 6, Labels: You’ll add a label to show the zombie’s lives and the number of cats in his conga line.
7. Chapter 7, Beginning tvOS: You’ll get Zombie Conga working on tvOS, in just a few simple steps!

Section II: Physics and Nodes

In this section, you will learn how to use the built-in 2D physics engine included with Sprite Kit to create movement as realistic as that in Angry Birds or Cut the Rope. You will also learn how to use special types of nodes that allow you to play videos or create shapes in your game.

In the process, you will create a physics puzzle game called Cat Nap, where you take the role of a cat who has had a long day and just wants to go to bed.

You will build this game across five chapters, in stages:

8. Chapter 8, Scene Editor: You’ll begin by creating the first level of the game. By the end, you’ll have a better understanding of Xcode’s level designer, better known as the scene editor.
9. Chapter 9, Beginning Physics: In this chapter, you’re going to make a little detour in order to learn the basics of creating physics simulations for your games. As a bonus, you’ll learn how to prototype games inside an Xcode playground.
10. Chapter 10, Intermediate Physics: You’ll learn about physics-based collision detection and create custom classes for your Sprite Kit nodes.
11. Chapter 11, Advanced Physics: You’ll add two more levels to the game as you learn about interactive bodies, joints between bodies, composed bodies and more.
12. Chapter 12, Crop, Video and Shape Nodes: You’ll add special new blocks to Cat Nap while learning about additional types of nodes that allow you to do amazing things—like play videos, crop images and create dynamic shapes.
13. Chapter 13, Intermediate tvOS: In this last chapter you are going to bring Cat Nap to the silver screen. You are going to take the fully developed game and add support for tvOS so the player can relax on their couch and play the game using only the remote.