History of this book
Three years ago, we wrote a book named iOS Games by Tutorials, covering how to
make 2D games with SpriteKit. One year later, we released a second edition fully
ported to Swift, as a free update for existing customers. One year after that, we
completely revamped it, renamed it and released it as 2D iOS & tvOS Games by
Tutorials. This year, we’re doing it again with 2D Apple Games by Tutorials.
At WWDC 2016, Apple announced a lot of cool new features to both SpriteKit and
Xcode, including built-in tile map support and the ability to run SpriteKit on
watchOS. Yes, you read that correctly!
These changes were so significant that we decided it would be better to completely
revamp the book (again!) — we even included new games!
If you already read 2D iOS & tvOS Games by Tutorials and you’re wondering what’s
new in this book, here are the highlights:
• Zombie Conga: Chapters 1-6 are mostly the same, with some minor updates to
support Swift 3 and iOS 10. We also removed the chapter showing how to port
the game to tvOS; that’s because we added a brand new section, “Section V:
Other Platforms”, which covers this topic — and more — in greater detail.
• Cat Nap: These chapters also remain the same, with some minor updates to
support Swift 3 and iOS 10. Just like we did with Zombie Conga, we removed the
chapter showing how to port the game to tvOS.
• Pest Control: First introduced in iOS Games by Tutorials, this new and improved
version shows you how to use the new tile maps features in SpriteKit (Chapters
12-13), as well as how to save and load game data (Chapter 14).
• Drop Charge: In these chapters, you’ll review previous material in the book and
learn about simple state machines, particle systems and juice, all updated for
Swift 3 and iOS 10. Because Apple released so many new features for
GameplayKit this year, we decided it would be too much to properly cover in this
book. As such, the chapters dealing with GameplayKit have been removed, and
will be covered elsewhere, at a later date.
• Zombie Piranhas: These new chapters introduce you to a new game specifically
designed to teach you how to work with other Apple platforms like macOS, tvOS
and watchOS (Chapters 18-20).
• CircuitRacer: These chapters were also updated for Swift 3 and iOS 10.
However, since Apple has abandoned iAd, we removed the chapter which covered
that topic.
As you can see, it’s somewhat of a major overhaul. If you read the book before, but
want to read it again and have limited time, the best thing to do is focus on the
new games, or the chapters that interest you most.
2D iOS & tvOS Games by Tutorials Introduction
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