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Chapter 1
Introduction
Have you ever imagined yourself writing a computer game and being able to make money selling
it? With Apple’s iTunes App Store and the accompanying mobile iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
devices, doing that is now easier than ever. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy—there’s still
a lot to learn about game development and programming games. But you are reading this book,
so I believe you’ve already made up your mind to take this journey. And you’ve chosen one of
the most interesting game engines to work with: cocos2d for iOS.
Developers using cocos2d come from a huge variety of backgrounds. Some, like me, have
been professional game developers for years, or even decades. Others are just starting to learn
programming for iOS devices or are freshly venturing into the exciting field of game development.
Whatever your background might be, I’m sure you’ll get something out of this book.
Two things unite all cocos2d developers: we love games, and we love creating and programming
them. This book pays homage to that, yet doesn’t forget about the tools that help ease the
development process. Most of all, you’ll be making games that matter along the way, and you’ll
see how this knowledge is applied in real game development.
You see, I get bored by books that spend all their pages teaching me how to make yet another
dull Asteroids clone using some specific game-programming API (application programming
interface. What’s more important, I think, are game-programming concepts and tools—the
things you take with you even as APIs or your personal programming preferences change. I’ve
amassed hundreds of programming and game development books over 20 years. The books
I value the most to this day are those that went beyond the technology and taught me why
certain things are designed and programmed the way they are. This book will focus not just on
working game code but also on why it works and which trade-offs to consider.
I would like you to learn how to write games that matter—games that are popular on the App
Store and relevant to players. I’ll walk you through the ideas and technical concepts behind
these games in this book and, of course, how cocos2d and Objective-C make these games tick.
You’ll find that the source code that comes with the book is enriched with a lot of comments,
which should help you navigate and understand all the nooks and crannies of the code.
Learning from someone else’s source code with a guide to help focus on what’s important is what
works best for me whenever I’m learning something new—and I like to think it will work great
