The Top iPhone Game Development Resources For Beginners
February 26th, 2009 by Juuso
This post is for myself. I wanted to get some information about how to do iPhone games and what resources I should read to get familiar with this stuff. After digging a long hole in the Internet I found some gold – so to speak.
Of course after finding this stuff for myself, I also made it available to you guys. In fact, you can also participate and share your own iPhone findings.
Here’s the list of resources you gotta check out if you want to know more about iPhone game development:
- iPhone – if you don’t know what iPhone is, check this. Or your eye sight. It’s like something you must have heard about. (I’m trying to be funny here)
- Apple’s iPhone developer center – the main resource to gain information about iPhone development. Here you can download the iPhone SDK for development (Mac only) and see tutorials, documentary, code reference and so on. (See also iPhone Developer Program)
- Appsamuck.com – iPhone tutorials (thanks Chris)
iPhone development tools:
- Unity offers an iPhone development solution.
- iTorque is a development tool by Garage Games.
- Cocos 2D – framework for building 2D game (thanks Totty)
- Oolong Engine – for 3D games (thanks shadhex)
- ShiVa – iPhone development tool by Stone Trip (thanks Daniel)
- iPhone Game Kit – “make your iPhone game in 24 hours” (thanks Nicolás)
iPhone blogs:
- Tap Tap Tap iPhone blog – Haven’t checked it much, but seemed like a decent iPhone blog (with some sales numbers too) that might be worth bookmarking.
- Shadhex blog, “mainly about iPhone programming”. It’s a new site but we’ll see if it grows larger
iPhone news, sites and nice (plus some not so nice) stories:
- “iPhone will put pressure on Nintendo’s handheld dominance”‘ – Oberon Media is excited about the App Store opportunities.
- Trouble in the 99 cent App Store – Not sure if it’s trouble, but you can get a pretty good picture about what they sell in app store (mainly Games 23%, Entertainment, 11%, Utilities 10%…)
- iPhone Developers Go From Rags to Riches – Really cool & motivating story about an indie who made it big in iPhone development.
- Coder’s Half-Million-Dollar Baby Proves iPhone Gold Rush Is Still On – Another great story about the game iShoot
- A conversation with an iPhone pirate. A funny/sad/hilarious/provocative/stupid (depends about your point-of-view) about iPhone pirates. I gotta give credit for the pirate to answer openly to those questions.
- List of sites to get your app noticed (thanks Nikita)
- Appshopper.com – iPhone store (thanks for the tip shadhex).
And here’s much more:
- Ari’s big list of iPhone resource (very good one, thanks for sharing)
That’s it folks.
Feel free to share your own iPhone resources in the blog entry comments.
Another good option for 2d stuff is Cocos2d for iphone. http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/
Be sure to check out Apps Amuck. We have 30 Days of iPhone Apps, where we did a full iPhone app every day for 30 Days. And there’s lots of other iPhone programming content.
Funnily enough sometime last week I did a whole load of research on iPhone too and have got it ready for a blog post, but haven’t posted it yet due to my recent game launch. I’ll post it soon though…maybe…
Thanks!
That will be some great reading for tonight, I see I missed a few. A few things I can add that I personally find useful is http://appshopper.com/ that I use to do research whenever I come with an idea for a new game or application.
For engines, there’s http://code.google.com/p/oolongengine/ for 3D, and http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone for 2D, which I’m currently working for my next app (and my first game on iphone).
And as a shameless plug, my blog talks about making the switch from windows to mac specifically to start working on the iphone.
Cheers and thanks again!
Alright, updated the list.
Thanks!
That appshopper link is rad, great for research, thanks!
There’s ShiVa too… ;-) http://www.stonetrip.com
Ah, excellent. I knew that but for some reason I had missed the ShiVa while building the list of tool. :) Now added
Jake: let me know when you got your blog post up… I’ll add it in this list…
In case anyone reading this is looking for advice on what to do AFTER making the game or app, I recently put together a list of sites where you can submit your app for review or to be featured:
http://www.nik-apps.com/2009/02/19-sites-to-get-your-app-noticed/
Great post Juuso!
Check out my list as well:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dkhkqj4_20dmzf4wgz
@Ari – wow, nice one!
Updated.
Thanks for putting this excellent list together! I wanted to share my list geared towards Unity3D as well: http://diamondtearz.org/lists/unity3d-iphone-unityremote-tutorials-tips-and-utilities/
FYI, if this all proves too difficult for you, check out http://www.iphonefreelancer.net , you can hire a freelancer to do the dirty work for you.
Hello dear, thanks for useful post!
That’s like the strangest (in a good way) comment I’ve seen this year :)