Swift Game Programming for Absolute Beginners

Swift Game Programming for Absolute Beginners teaches Apple’s Swift language in the context of four, fun and colorful games. Learn the Swift 2.0 language, and learn to create game apps for iOS at the same time – a double win!

The four games you’ll develop while reading this book are:

• Painter
• Tut’s Tomb
• Penguin Pairs
• Tick Tick

These four games are casual, arcade-style games representing the aim-and-shoot, casual, puzzle, and platform styles of game play. Professionally developed game assets form part of the book download. You’ll get professionally drawn sprites and imagery that’ll have you proud to show your learning to friends and family.

The approach in Swift Game Programming for Absolute Beginners follows the structure of a game rather than the syntax of a language. You’ll learn to create game worlds, manage game objects and game states, define levels for players to pass through, implement animations based upon realistic physics, and much more. Along the way you’ll learn the language, but always in the context of fun and games.

Swift is Apple’s new programming language introduced in 2014 to replace Objective-C as the main programming language for iOS devices and Mac OS X. Swift is a must learn language for anyone targeting Apple devices, and Swift Game Programming for Absolute Beginners provides the most fun you’ll ever have in stepping over the threshold toward eventual mastery of the language.

What you’ll learn

• Write applications in possibly the most important new language of the decade
• Create games to run on Apple devices such as phones and tablets, and desktops too
• Create and manage game worlds having multiple levels through which players progress
• React to player input whether from mouse, keyboard, or touch
• Achieve realistic movement of game objects through applied physics
• Prepare your games properly for commercial deployment

Who this book is for

Swift Game Programming for Absolute Beginners is for programmers and technology enthusiasts wanting to learn to program and develop applications for Apple devices such as phones and tablets. The book is also for anyone wanting to learn to program in Apple's new language named Swift. No prior knowledge of Swift is assumed. Swift Game Programming for Absolute Beginners teaches the Swift language from scratch in the context of creating a series of fun and colorful games that you'll be proud to develop and show to your friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

Table of Contents

Part I: Getting Started

1. The Swift Language

2. Game Programming Basics

3. Creating a Game World

4. Game Assets

Part II: Painter

5. Knowing What the Player is Doing

6. Reacting to Player Input

7. Basic Game Objects

8. Game Object Types

9. Colors and Collisions

10. Limited Lives

11. Organizing Game Objects

12. Finishing the Painter Game

Part III: Galactic Waste

13. Adapting to Different Devices

14. Game Object Hierarchies

15. Game Physics

16. Game Object Interaction

17. Finishing the Galactic Waste Game

Part IV: Penguin Pairs

18. Sprite Sheets

19. Storing and Recalling Game Data

20. Pairing the Penguins

21. Finishing the Penguin Pairs Game

22. The Main Game Structure

23. Animation

Part V: Tick Tick

24. Platform Game Physics

25. Intelligent Enemies

26. Adding Player Interaction

27. Finishing the Tick Tick Game