So you want to be a game developer?

Developing games for the iPhone or iPad can be a lot of fun. It is one of the few things we can do to feel like a kid again. Everyone, it seems, has an idea for a game, and what better platform to develop for than the iPhone and iPad?

What stops most people from actually developing a game, though, is that game development covers a wide swath of computer science skills—graphics, audio, networking— and at times it can seem like you are drinking from a fire hose. When you are first getting started, becoming comfortable with Objective-C can seem like a huge task, especially if you start to look at things like OpenGL ES, OpenAL, and other lowerlevel APIs for your game.

Writing a game for the iPhone and iPad does not have to be that difficult—and it isn’t. To help simplify the task of building 2D games, look no further than Cocos2D.

You no longer have to deal with low-level OpenGL programming APIs to make games for the iPhone, and you don’t need to be a math or physics expert. There’s a much faster and easier way—use a free and popular open source game programming framework called Cocos2D. Cocos2D is extremely fun and easy to use, and with it you can skip the low-level details and focus on what makes your game different and special!

This book teaches you how to use Cocos2D to make your own games, taking you step by step through the process of making an actual game that’s on the App Store right now! The game you build in this book is called Space Viking and is the story of a kick-ass Viking transported to an alien planet. In the process of making the game, you get hands-on experience with all of the most important elements in Cocos2D and see how everything fits together to make a complete game.