Fr

Game development has always been an exciting subject

for game enthusiasts, and iOS game development takes
a big leap in terms of perpetuating growth and creativity.
With iOS 9 and Sprite Kit, comes a series of breathtaking
features to improve your game development experience.
Sprite Kit, an exciting framework supported by Apple, allows
you to create stunning games at blazing speed.
Learn the basics and create your own fully functional
platformer game on your iOS platform by using the Sprite
Kit game engine. Take a detailed look at game development
with the various features implemented in iOS 8 that further
increase the essence of game development. Explore and
implement features such as physics bodies, character
animations, scoring, and other essential elements in your
game. You will successfully conceive a 2D game along
with discovering the path to reach the pinnacle of iOS
game development.

Who this book is written for

Learn about the Sprite Kit game engine and

create indie games in no time
Set sail on the quest of game development
by successfully creating a runner game
Find out more about the IDE provided by
Apple for game development Xcode
Get an overview of Apple's latest programming
language, Swift
Discover the functionalities of scenes and
nodes in a game
Explore how physics bodies work and how to
add this feature into your game
Grasp knowledge of particle effects and
shaders
Add a scoring system into your game to
visualize high scores

$ 44.99 US
28.99 UK

community experience distilled

P U B L I S H I N G

E x p e r i e n c e

D i s t i l l e d

iOS Game Development

By Example
Learn how to develop an ace game for your iOS device
using Sprite Kit

Prices do not include

local sales tax or VAT
where applicable

Visit www.PacktPub.com for books, eBooks,

code, downloads, and PacktLib.

Sa
m

pl

C o m m u n i t y

Samanyu Chopra

This book is targeted at novice, intermediate, and proficient

game developers coming from a different development
platform and wanting to migrate to game development
with the Sprite Kit engine. The reader does not need
any knowledge of Sprite Kit and building games on the
iOS platform.

What you will learn from this book

iOS Game Development By Example

iOS Game Development

By Example

ee

Samanyu Chopra

In this package, you will find:

The author biography

A preview chapter from the book, Chapter 1 'An Introduction to Sprite Kit'
A synopsis of the books content
More information on iOS Game Development By Example

About the Author

Samanyu Chopra is a developer, entrepreneur, and game developer with a

bank of experience in conceptualizing, developing, and producing computer and

mobile software. He has been programming since the age of 11. He is proficient
in programming languages such as JavaScript, Scala, C#, C++, Swift, and so on.
He has a wide range of experience in developing for computers and mobiles.
He has worked on a majority of game engines and mobile platforms, and also
has a strong proficiency in the Scala programming language.
He is the cofounder and CEO of Daphnis Labs, a mobile app and game development
studio. He has experience in managing development, leading the tech jargon, and
has published over 150 apps and games for himself and his clients. In his studio, he
leads a team of more than 20 members. He is known for executing eccentric projects
in the app and game development spaces. He also conducts mobile development
workshops at various engineering institutes.
He is ardent about his work, and his colleagues, students, and coworkers think of
him as a very dedicated and open-minded person. He is inclined toward investing
his time in the research and development of new technologies.
He is an avid traveler and adventurer and a very fun-loving and eccentric personality,
as described by the people around him. He has an undying love for travel, tech, and
comedy. He is inspired by all the people who have made a stand on their own from
scratch. He loves his family and dedicates his life to them.

You can know more about Daphnis Labs at www.DaphnisLabs.com. You can write a
tweet to him at @samdonly1 or find him on Facebook for any updates. You can also
reach him at samanyu@DaphnisLabs.com.

Preface
Sprite Kit is a set of tools to develop 2D games for the Apple iOS platform. Sprite Kit
provides powerful features for graphics and the animation of images having texture,
and so on. It is one of the best available game engines for iOS devices. It is very
simple and powerful, with full support provided by Apple, hence it is more reliable
and convenient than any third-party game engine available today.
The Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Xcode, provided by Apple for
app development can also be used for Sprite Kit game development. Objective-C
or Swift, either of the two programming languages can be used for Sprite Kit game
development. Sprite Kit is already being used by many developers for iOS game
development. There is a good amount of information available that focuses on Sprite
Kit set up and development. However, a structured and concise resource discussing
about the complete development process and feature set is not currently available.
This book explains the basics of Sprite Kit development and allows a beginner
to become skilled in Sprite Kit game development using the Swift programming
language with its complete set of development features. This book is a complete
guide for Sprite Kit and a perfect starting point for those wanting to set sail on the
iOS game industry.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, An Introduction to Sprite Kit, introduces you to the Sprite Kit game engine,
along with its various elements and features. It also helps in setting up a new Xcode
project for developing a Sprite Kit game.
Chapter 2, Scenes in Sprite Kit, explains an important topic in Sprite Kit, that is, scenes.
Along with this, there is a brief about the node tree drawing order.
Chapter 3, Sprites, explains sprites and their properties. It also applies some of the
properties in the example game.

Preface

Chapter 4, Nodes in Sprite Kit, discusses about nodes and its subclasses in detail. It also
explains the implementation of various node subclasses in the example game.
Chapter 5, Physics in Sprite Kit, talks about physics simulation in a Sprite Kit game.
It explains the types of physics bodies. Physics capabilities are applied to the example
game in this chapter.
Chapter 6, Animating Sprites, Controls, and SceneKit, covers animating nodes and
adding controls to a Sprite Kit game. These features are added in the example game.
It also talks about SceneKit.
Chapter 7, Particle Effects and Shaders, discusses about particle effects and shaders,
along with their implementation in the example game.
Chapter 8, Handling Multiple Scenes and Levels, helps us understand the need for
different levels in a game. This chapter also explains how to create multiple scenes.
Chapter 9, Performance Enhancement and Extras, discusses in detail how to improve
the performance of a Sprite Kit game, along with performance measuring using
instruments. It also explains the scoring system, sound, and player running
animation in the example game.
Chapter 10, Revisiting Our Game and More on iOS 9, discusses the various steps
involved in the development of a game, and introduces readers to the Game
Center and discusses new features that will be introduced in iOS 9.

An Introduction to Sprite Kit

In this book we will be discussing about iOS game development using Sprite Kit.
We will be taking a fun approach and shall make an actual 2D platform game on the
iPhone in the process. We are going to develop a 2D (two dimensional) game; a game
which relies on only two coordinates. Some famous 2D games include Mario, Hill
Climb Racing, Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and so on.
A 2D game only deals with two dimensions along x and y axes (left/right and up/
down) but not along the z axis (forward/backward). So basically, players cannot
rotate or move the camera freely in a 3D space to view objects from other angles and
perspectives. Although there are exceptions such as 2.5D games; we will be talking
about that in later chapters. So, let's not keep things waiting and dive into the book.

What's new in iOS 8?

You might be familiar with Apple's mobile operating system, popularly known as
iOS; the latest version of this operating system is iOS 8. This version has a lot of
new additions over its predecessor, iOS 7. Some of the additions in this version are
the introduction of the Swift programming language, loads of new API's, and most
importantly, improvements in Sprite Kit and its peripheral frameworks.
In this book, we will be using the Swift programming language over Objective-C.
Although, you can use Sprite Kit with either Objective-C or Swift, Swift offers much
easier syntax, and has a simpler learning curve.

[1]

An Introduction to Sprite Kit

Getting to know Swift

Swift is Apple's entirely new multi-paradigm programming language for developing
applications on Apple devices. Swift has been in development for 4 years, and was
announced in 2014 at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). Swift is
both, a scripting and programming language; it has the ability to return multiple
return values. Swift takes different constructs that are loved from many languages
including Objective-C, Rust, Haskell, Ruby, Python, C#, CLU, and more. It has type
safety feature that is, to prevent you passing string as int thus minimizing possible
errors in your code.
We will be discussing more about Swift, as and when required, in the further topics
covered.

Getting to know Sprite Kit

Sprite Kit is a framework from Apple, meant for developing 2D games for iOS
devices. It is one of the best ways to make games for iOS devices. It is easy to learn,
powerful and fully supported by Apple, which makes it more reliable to use than
third-party game development engines.
Sprite Kit was introduced in iOS 7 and allowed easy, fast game development; it has
similarities with Cocos2d, which is a popular library for game development. If you
are somewhat familiar with Cocos2d, Sprite Kit will be a breeze for you.
Sprite Kit provides various functionalities that are useful for games, such as graphics
rendering, animation utilities, sound playback, a particle system, and physics
simulation. In Sprite Kit, every node will have a property name and physics body,
which can consist of arbitrary shapes such as rectangles, polygons, circles, paths, and
so on. Sprite Kit provides a richer particle system, where any aspect can be changed
by code during the animation. In Sprite Kit's particle system, you can also add
custom actions to the particles created. In addition, Xcode provides built-in support
for Sprite Kit so that you can create complex special effects and texture atlases
directly in Xcode. This combination of framework and tools makes Sprite Kit a good
choice for games and other apps that require similar kinds of animation.
Because Sprite Kit supports a rich rendering infrastructure, and handles all of the
low-level work to submit drawing commands to OpenGL, you can focus your efforts
on solving higher-level design problems and creating your game functionality.
As Sprite Kit is a native framework of iOS, it provides in-built support for using the
particle effects, texture effects, and physics simulations. The performance of Sprite
Kit is better than other third-party frameworks/gaming engines, as it is a native
framework.
[2]

Chapter 1

Advantages of Sprite Kit

The main advantage of Sprite Kit is that it's built into iOS. There is no need to
download any other third-party libraries or depend on external resources to develop
2D games. Other iOS APIs such as, iAd, In-App purchases, and so on, can be easily
used without banking on extra plugins. You don't have to get familiar with any new
programming language, the languages supported for Sprite Kit can also be used
for app development on iOS. The best thing of all is that it is free, you get all the
functionalities of Sprite Kit at no cost. You can run your game on both Mac and iOS
without much effort, all you need to do is change its controls.

Elements of Sprite Kit

Now we are going to discuss some elements of Sprite Kit, which are essential for
game development. A game made in Sprite Kit consists of many scenes which are
made of nodes, and the functioning of a node in a scene is determined by actions.

Scenes
A level or environment in a game is termed as a scene. We make scenes as per our
requirement, such as menus, levels, and so on. So, there are different scenes for
different levels and also for different menus in a game. It's like a canvas where you
position your elements.
A scene in Sprite Kit is represented by an SKScene object. A scene holds sprites and
other contents to be rendered. To switch scenes, we can use the SKTransition class.

Nodes
Nodes are fundamental building blocks for all content in a scene. The SKScene class
is a descendant of the SKNode class, so a scene is a root node. The SKNode class does
not draw anything on scene by itself; we can think of it as a base class for other node
classes. There are node subclasses as follows:

SKSpriteNode: This can be used for drawing textured sprites, playing video
content, and more
SK3DNode: This can be used for rendering a Scene Kit scene as a 2D textured

image

SKVideoNode: This can be used for playing video content

SKLabelNode: This can be used for rendering a text string

[3]

An Introduction to Sprite Kit

SKShapeNode: This can be used for rendering shape, based on a core

SKEmitterNode: This can be used for creating and rendering particles

SKCropNode: This can be used for cropping child nodes using a mask

graphics path

SKEffectNode: This can be used for applying a core image filter to its

child node

SKLightNode: This can be used for applying lighting and shadows to a scene

SKFieldNode: This can be used for applying physics effects to a specific

portion of the scene

Actions
An action tells a node what to do and allows you to perform different things, such as:

Moving nodes in any direction

Making any node follow a path

Rotating nodes

Scaling of nodes

Showing or hiding a node

Changing the content of a sprite node

Playing sound

Removing nodes from a scene

Performing action on a child's node, and so on

To create a run action, first, create the action using the particular action class,
configure the properties for the created action, and call a run action by passing
action object as a parameter. When the scene processes the node, the actions of
that particular node will be executed.

Features of Sprite Kit

Sprite Kit provides many features to facilitate the development of a game. These
features can be used for enhancing the experience as well as performance of the
game. Let's discuss them in brief.

[4]

Chapter 1

Particle editor
This feature was introduced in iOS 7. Particle editor is used to add special effects
in a game, like adding a mist effect in a game scene. Here, we can customize many
things, such as:

The number of particles

Limit of particles allowed

The color of particles

The size of a particle

The life of a particle

The location of a particle in a scene, and so on

Texture atlas generator

Texture atlas generator combines all image files into one or more large images, in
order to improve performance. We will discuss this in detail in the later chapters.
It is recommended to use a lesser number of images to reduce draw calls (number
of images rendering on a scene).

Shaders
Shaders were introduced in iOS 8. They are used to produce a variety of special
effects; they calculate rendering effects on graphic hardware with a high degree of
flexibility, for example, we have seen ripple effects in many apps/games. Wherever
a user touches the screen, a ripple effect will be produced.
In Sprite Kit, shaders are represented by the SKShaderNode class object.

Lighting and shadows

Lighting and shadows were introduced in iOS 8. These effects are produced using
the SKLightNode class object. The SKLightNode object can:

Spread a lighting effect at any desirable position on the scene

Add lighting in any sprite

Support colors and shadows

It's just a type SKNode, so we can apply any property that we apply to any SKNode.

[5]

An Introduction to Sprite Kit

Physics
Simulating physics in Sprite Kit can be achieved by adding physics bodies to
the scenes. A physics engine has the sole purpose of moving objects around in a
simulated world. The physics bodies take the properties of objects, such as mass,
shape material, current trajectory, and so on, and calculate a new position for all
those objects.
Every object on the Sprite Kit game scene will have a physics body. A physics body
object is connected to a node on the node tree of a particular scene. The scene will
simulate the effect of forces and collisions on those particular physics bodies that are
connected to the node tree, whenever the scene computes a new frame of animation.
We can apply a particular physics property on those nodes using their particular
physics properties such as gravity, mass, force, friction, and so on.

The game loop

Following is a frame life cycle diagram:

At the start, the update function is called to where we set up the logic of the game.
After that, the scene evaluates the actions. After the actions are evaluated, we get
a callback. After that, we set up physics, if any. When the physics simulation is
finished, we get another call with didSimulatePhysics. Then, we apply constraint
and get another callback, didApplyConstraints. The last callback method is
didFinishUpdate; we get it just before frame is completed and view is ready to
render. Finally SKView renders the scene; the frame is complete and it continues
60 times per second.
[6]

Chapter 1

Setting up a project
We have discussed many things about Sprite Kit, now it's time to see a project in
action and gain some practical knowledge.

The Hello World project

We'll need to create a new project to build Hello World. An Xcode project organizes
everything your app needs into one convenient place. Let's begin by creating a brand
new game project in Xcode by carrying out either of the first two points, and then
continuing as shown in the list:
1. Click on Create a new Xcode project on the welcome screen:

[7]

An Introduction to Sprite Kit

2. Instead, you can also select File | New | Project from the file menu:

3. Select Game from the new project selection window:

[8]

Chapter 1

4. The next window asks you to customize options for your project. Fill out the
fields as shown in the following screenshot:

Product Name: It is the name of the game

Organization Name: If you are an individual, then your name, or the

name of the organization

Organization Identifier: A unique identifier of your organization

Bundle Identifier: It is a default ID generated automatically using

organization identifier and product name.

Language: The programming language you are using, that is,

Objective-C or Swift

Game Technology: The game framework being used, like Scene Kit,
Sprite Kit, Metal, and so on

Devices: The devices you want your game to run on; iPad, iPhone,
or both

These fields can be anything you want

5. Press Next and Xcode will ask where to save your new project. Choose a
directory and then click on Create.

[9]

An Introduction to Sprite Kit

6. After saving, it should open Xcode to your brand new Hello World project,
specifically to the project properties screen. On this screen, unselect the
Portrait option under Device Orientation. This file will be automatically
saved, so you won't have to do anything further:

[ 10 ]

Chapter 1

Result
Run the default game project by pressing + R on your keyboard, or by clicking
on the little play button in the top left corner. If a simulator isn't present, Xcode will
download one for you before launching the app. The result will look as follows:

Summary
We also learned how to create a Sprite Kit project and run Hello World in it.
In the next chapter, we will be diving deeply into scenes, and also into adding scenes
to our Platformer game.

[ 11 ]

Get more information iOS Game Development By Example

Where to buy this book

You can buy iOS Game Development By Example from the Packt Publishing website.
Alternatively, you can buy the book from Amazon, BN.com, Computer Manuals and most internet
book retailers.
Click here for ordering and shipping details.

www.PacktPub.com

Stay Connected: