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KingCrunchs kleine WeltiPhone and iPad Game Development: Must Have Tools
And Now for Something Completely Different: I’ve just started with iOS Game Development. Just for fun. The main reason for that was that I finally switched from Windows to my brand new MacBook Pro and wanted to learn Objective C. And what is the best way to get used to a new programming language? It’s coding games, of course!
So here are some points you should know if you start with iOS Game Development. First of all, Objective C is a – sometimes – weird mixture of C++ and Smalltalk. Actually, I find the syntax of Objective C really annoying. I guess the idea of creating a mixture of C++ and Smalltalk was to develop a “readable” version of an object oriented C language. In my opinion, the godfathers of Objective C completely failed. But as with all discussions about programming languages: this is my personal oppinion and shouldn’t stop you from diving into Objective C.
Anyway, this post is about “must have tools”. So here is the list:
- XCode: First of all, you need to get a copy of XCode, Apple’s IDE.
- Cocos2d: Cocos2d is one of the best frameworks to create 2D games.
- ParticleDesigner: A great tool to create beautiful particle effects. A demo version can be downloaded here.
- TexturePacker: an awesome tool to “turn chaos into order”, i.e. to put all you sprites into a single sprite sheet. Get your copy here.
That’s all for today. I’ll keep you up to date about my progress in game development.