“Learning iOS Game Programming” – Finished
Yep, you heard it here first, I’ve finished the book :o)
I can’t believe the journey I’ve been on. The first word of the book was written on the 9th July at 19:32. Now, it may seem odd that I can give you the exact date and time, but it was a big moment and something that I made a note of :o)
I was planning on doing a post on the year anniversary of starting the book to say it was finished, but hey, I’m only a month out.
Today I reviewed the very last ready to print versions of the book and it looks fantastic. I could only imagine this moment just over a year ago and it’s a great feeling to finally be here. The book should be heading to print in the next few days and should be available early September.
At this point I’d really like to thank everyone who has been following this blog and provided me with amazing support. If it wasn’t for the great feedback on the original tutorials and community which has built up, I don’t think I would have really pushed on and got to this point. Your support has been much appreciated and you are all very much part of this book.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank John Bloomfield. John is the silent partner in all this activity, quietly working behind the scenes to keep the blog up and running and making sure everything looks good and is easy to use. John is currently working on a new look for the blog so watch out for more info about that.
I’d also like to thank Tom Bradley. Tom has been a long time follower of the blog, one of the books technical reviewers and also one of the beta testers for SLQ. He is also the co-creator of Particle Designer with myself. Tom has been instrumental in helping track down some of the most awkward bugs I came across during the development of SLQ and also the creator of TBXML which is used to parse any XML in SLQ.
I’d also like to thank Chuck Toporek and the team from Addison-Wesley. They have been an incredible team, guiding me through the process of creating the book and always being there to provide advice and assistance. A great team to work with, especially for a first time author such as myself :o)
So what next……and the answer is plenty. I’ve got a list of tutorials I’d like to work on that cover new topics such as Path Finding, new features in iOS 4, the gyroscope, 3D etc. Seeing the blog build a community over the last year has been great and I want it to continue. It’s been a while since I put any new tutorials on the blog, so I’m hoping to get things moving again as soon as possible.
That’s it really, a MASSIVE day and one I’m so pleased to be seeing. I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip as much as I have and I hope you enjoy the book.
There is one last thing for me to do in this post, and that’s to show you the cover of the book, just so you can recognise it when you walk into your favourite book shop or go hunting online ;o)
Learning iOS Game Programming - Cover
Mike
55 Comments
CB on August 9th, 2010
Congratulations — just completing any book is an achievement in itself. And judging from the usefulness of your tutorials (which I’m following right now as my intro to iPhone GP), it’ll be a good one.
Ralph on August 9th, 2010
Congratulations!!!! I pre-ordered and I’m really excited about getting the hard copy.
This marks a long awaited day for us followers. Your tutorials are really top notch and I’m sure I not the only one that will be excited to see more.
Great Job Mike!!!
Ralph
RoberRM on August 9th, 2010
Congratulations, Mike! Now out to enjoy some well deserved vacation time? :D
John on August 9th, 2010
Congrats mate. An awesome achievement. I look forward to reading my (free lol) copy ;)
Your mum would be proud mate, don’t ever forget that!
Look forward to sprucing the blog up and creating an awesome community!
nexus6 on August 10th, 2010
Congrats Mike!!! What a great accomplishment.
Trisect Development on August 10th, 2010
Congratulations Mike, I cant wait to get my paper version of the book.
Good work maid.
Eugene on August 10th, 2010
Congratulations, Mike! It’s just awesome.
fstltna on August 10th, 2010
Way to go! I can’t wait to read it. Where will you be selling it?
Marisa
Jamie Hill on August 10th, 2010
Congratulations Mike!
kingbombs on August 10th, 2010
congratulations
Simon on August 10th, 2010
Con grats – that’s awesome news! Well done you!
Does this mean that the final version is up (or will be shortly) on rough cuts? Really looking forward to reading it, plus comparing it with the first draft. As I love seeing how these things have come along – gives me inspiration!
That really is great news, I’m very happy for you. I hope it’s a success!
:)
mike on August 10th, 2010
Thanks for the comments guys, much appreciated :O)
@Simon, I’m not sure what the timings are for Safari, but I’ll check with the publisher and get some info on it.
Mike
Ryan on August 10th, 2010
Congratulations mike! I hope I can get a copy somehow!
Tony on August 10th, 2010
Congratulations, Mike! The cover looks great and original. It’ll be a VERY useful addition to my library. Following the development of it and SLQ on this blog also makes it a special addition. Many thanks!
Tony
Arif on August 10th, 2010
COngratulation Mike…..Can’t wait to read your book and update my brain:)
Ray Wenderlich on August 10th, 2010
Congratulations! That must have been a TON of work. Looking forward to seeing it out there!
Xalthorn on August 11th, 2010
Congratulations on completing the book.
I loved your tutorials and I’ve pre-ordered the book with Amazon :)
sjwaller on August 12th, 2010
Nice one – it’s on my list :)
Rob on August 12th, 2010
Great stuff…pre-ordered…
Roberto Zilli on August 12th, 2010
Hi Mike,
I’ve made a pre-order on Amazon…Oh no,
September 20, 2010!!????
Ok I’ll be waiting ;)
Simon on August 12th, 2010
Mike, is there any update on the code?
If there is could you send it to me ?
Thanks
NeptuneNancy on August 14th, 2010
Congratulations, Mike! I’ll be looking for it!
AD on August 15th, 2010
Please ensure the code you’ve got in the book works fine, ensure the copywriting is good; also please state when it should be on Amazon. Thanks.
mike on August 15th, 2010
I’ve currently got a release date of the 9th September. I don’t know when that means people like Amazon will be shipping copies of the book. If I get that information I’ll post it here.
Mike
Rookie on August 15th, 2010
Cool！ good news for all new iPhone game developer!
alastairreynolds on August 15th, 2010
Fantastic work Mike, some stamina to finish that! Well, bought off of rough cuts and sucking it for knowledge as we speak on the trusty iPad. Like to say thanks as well for this blog and your tutorials…without them I would have floundered and given up a long time ago. As it is I think you’ve pushed me over the learning curve with this iphone game development lark. It’s all downhill from here….ha!
Insoft on August 15th, 2010
I found your tutorials very helpful for making a iPhone game based on OpenGL, before I came across 71Squared website I couldn’t find any great tutorials on doing a game in OpenGL on the iPhone and came across yours and when I heard that a book was getting done based on these tutorials I have been looking forward in it’s release and have now placed my pre-order this book.
I have only done iPhone puzzles games based on UIView and UIImage etc…, with your tutorials and your great book getting released I can now do better games that use OpenGL and get the best out of the iPhone graphics capability.
Sumaleth on August 16th, 2010
Congrats on finishing the book! I’m looking forward to reading it.
Rowan.
nexus6 on August 16th, 2010
anyone see mikes book/video on amazon… check this out
http://www.amazon.com/Learning.....0321699424
Congrats again mike!!!
Ryan on August 17th, 2010
Hi Mike, I’ve only gotten on board today somewhat late on your whole tutorial series. But, I’m extremely excited to be learning iPhone development. I just ordered a book on Objective-C for beginners and I just added your book to my wishlist on Amazon for my next adventure after having mastered the Objective-C basics. I really look forward to your future tutorials and I hope to see more iOS 4 development tutorials listed maybe even some back to the basics now in the present tutorials going over the same concepts from your original tutorials but recorded on the newest Xcode with the current iOS 4 SDK. Anyway Mike, great stuff so far and you can definitely count me as a new avid reader of your blog and future book.
Cheers!
chuckdude on August 17th, 2010
Congrats, Mike! You were a great author to work with, and I can’t wait to work with you on your next book.
Chuck
Josh on August 28th, 2010
Congrats Mike – I’ve had a quick read through the rough cuts version. Looking forward to getting the paper copy.
kristof on August 31st, 2010
i just bought the printed book on amazon.uk (i live in europe so the delivery costs are lower there for me)
will the scourcecode be on a cd/dvd inside the book or will it be a download ?
im just wondering becoause i looked at the book in safaribooks
and there was a death link to the downloads
i came at informIT or something
but there were no downloads for this book
mike on September 1st, 2010
Hi kristof
The source code will be available as a downloadable dmg file. I’m not sure when the publisher will make the file available, but I’m assuming it will be done by the time the book is finally released :o)
Mike
lgertel on September 1st, 2010
Great work…
I have already pre-buyed my Kindle version.
Hope it will be well formatted!
jaffa66 on September 7th, 2010
Hi Mike,
I bought your book as an ebook from informIT yesterday. I could not find a link to download the source code anywhere on the website. Do you have any information about this. I have been looking forward to reading this book since you first announced it. Thanks for all the hard work you put in.
kristof on September 9th, 2010
just bought the pdf from informIT to
so that i can compare my code with the code in the book
when the .dmg file is available i can start learning
lets hope its soon
the book looks very good written
congrats mike
crap on September 10th, 2010
What a load of crap. It’s now 1 month later and the source code isnt available to download. Complete shit. I wasted my money.
mike on September 10th, 2010
For anyone having problems finding the download for the book, follow the link below and click on the Downloads tab.
http://www.informit.com/store/.....0321699424
Mike
Ali on September 10th, 2010
Disgruntled ex girlfriend? Personally I would have paid twice the book price just for the free stuff on this site. I appreciate all your time and effort and hope the book leads to a swift retirement!
fbronner on September 21st, 2010
Thanks,
I can finally download the example source code…Wasn’t very easy to find.
Now, all that remains is to try to translate my 8 year old game design sketches into something I can write :-)
zanzaidi on October 10th, 2010
Hi Mike,
Just bought the book a few days ago and have gone through the first few chapters. It is a very interesting book. I hope to continue going through the book in the next few weeks and perhaps try to come up with something of my own.
One question though, do you have any plans on updating the sample code? I have the latest SDK and Xcode version, the source code that’s available through InformIT.com throws error “There is no SDK with the name or path…”. Let me know how you plan to deal with this? Thanks!
Nathan Clagnan on October 13th, 2010
Hey Mike!
Well, next year I am going to TAFE to do a Game Development course, and was looking for something to do to get me some experience. So I looked around, and heard that creating apps for iPhone was a great way to start. So I was looking around and found out that I needed a mac to run the iOS SDK. So I was thinking, hmmm, what if this isn’t for me, what if I dont like it… but I said to myself, ill give it a shot, so I went on Apple store and got a refurbished 13″ Macbook Pro, and then started to look for some tutorials on the net. Couldn’t find any, but heard a great book was being released, so I got my local bookshop to order it in. Just picked it up today, and im currently up to chapter 3 and starting to get into it. The way you explain it is great. The beginning of the book really got me into this iPhone app making, and the main thing is that I am actually understanding it! This book is helping me to achieve my dreams and goals of creating games. Thanks for writing this book!
Regards,
Nathan Clagnan.
demac on October 13th, 2010
Just to inform readers: I downloaded the source code from the link given by mike earlier (from where you buy the book on InformIT.com). I could then load the xcode project from the SLQTSOR folder then compile and run the complete game in the iphone simulator. I didn’t get any errors.
Kristof on October 13th, 2010
I got no errors either
But you have to change the active SDK to you latest versio
Thats all
zanzaidi on October 14th, 2010
Good hint, Kristof. Here’s what I did:
1) Copied the chapter code to a local folder
2) from the build settings, changed the Base SDK to “Simulator 4.1″ (Device 4.1 was giving me code signing errors)
Build and run…it didn’t throw any errors. Thanks!
Mike on November 24th, 2010
Hi kalamantina
You are right that the latest OpenGL ES template in XCode does not match the book. Apple made changes to the template after the book was released unfortunately.
I’m not planning on changing chapter 3 to reflect the new template as I prefer the older template and believe it is easier to use when creating a game. To continue with the book I suggest using the project that comes with Chapter 3 and building on that.
Hope that helps.
Mike
kalamantina on November 24th, 2010
Is there a main page for the book? I bought it and want to know whether there are any updates to the code in it, because its not fully compatible with what xcode generates.
kalamantina on November 24th, 2010
As a matter of fact, Chapter 3 is way off base, Xcode generated project does not have ES1Renderer.h, or ES2Renderer.h??
Am I missing something here?
mike on November 24th, 2010
Hi kalamantina
There is a forum where the book and errata can be discussed which can be found at
http://www.71squared.com/commu.....dbdaece218
I also posted a reply to your question on the chapter 3 project which has appeared above your posts for some reason.
Hope that helps
Mike
George Birbilis on December 9th, 2010
Won a copy of your book, looks very nice one and a pretty complete treatment for 2D scroller games. Congrats
George Birbilis on December 9th, 2010
btw, won it on 101FTB
Peter on August 9th, 2010
Congrats Mike!! The cover looks great too :)