Hello all, Currently I am a iphone game BUYER and I know how much success just one or two iphone games can be and I have always wanted to know where to start with for creating an iphone game. Thanks, Michael
i see that you are new, welcome by the way, but please post in the right section, if you have a question like this ask in the developper section, but welcome to the forums and enjoy.
Firstly, you need a mac. Then download the SDK for free... you can try some programs on the simulator... But eventually you need to become a registered iphone developer which costs $99/year...
Been there... What I did was DL the SDK (you need a Mac for that), learn C and Objective-C, buy a couple of books about iPhone game development and read/watch a lot of (not necessarily iPhone-related) game programming tutorials. That will give you the basics and then you just have to practice. Create simple games like a Tetris-clone or a Pong-clone and just go from there. Also, think about using Cocos2D-iPhone because it makes the whole game-creation process a lot easier. If you think that's too much work, just Google some cheap or free iPhone engines or use stuff like Gamesalad. Good luck!
Hi, you might want to buy source code of pre-existing games to help you get a leg up. Cocos2D (2D) and SIO2 (3D) have full source code available for purchase: SIO2 3D iPhone Shooter Full Source Code Cocos2D 2D iPhone Game Full Source --yarri
Well, the SDK is mac-only. Unless you're thinking about the not-necessarily-100%-legal-and-definitely-no-walk-in-the-park-route of getting a Hackintosh up and running.
True that. I just started developing several months ago. After researching getting OSX installed on my PC I decided to just buy a Mac Mini for $600. Works great!
If you have a friend interested in iPhone development, both of you should learn together at the same time. You have someone to help you when you have questions, and you can keep each other motivated. Start small. Do something ridiculously simple like a tic tac toe game. Then you can move on to something bigger like a puzzle game. Throwing together a game engine is not hard. The hard part is integration and making it bug free. Years ago, I threw together a match-3 puzzler in 2 days using C++ and assembly. But if you want to take that to a complete game, that would take a lot more work. You need to add in a menu system, animation effects, tweak the controls, and make sure you don't have any weird bugs like pieces disappearing or getting stuck.
Don't forget to mention that the Mac has to be Intel-based, or else it will not work. You can get started for free with just the Mac, the SDK and the simulator. It helps a lot to have some programming background in a different language, but in some cases it might be easier to learn Obj-C from scratch, as long as you can grasp the basic programming concepts.
I would second the suggestion to look for an existing iPhone engine rather than rolling your own. If you're just starting out, coding an engine from scratch will likely teach you a lot, but make no mistake, you will be learning it the HARD way. I just started out a few months ago myself with Cocos2D and Objective C, coming from a Flash/.NET background, and it would have taken me months longer to build anything without being able to peek at the engine code now and again to figure things out.
