iPhone Game Blueprints

Igor Uduslivii

• Editorial: Packt Publishing
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781849690263
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Ciencia de la computación
• Categoría: Programación de juegos

In Detail

Designing and selling games on the iOS platform has become a phenomenon ever since the introduction of the App Store. With mobile gaming taking the World by storm, users are indulging in all different types of games. iPhone Game Blueprints is a hands on guide to both inspire and help developers, graphic designers, and game enthusiasts to create their own games for iOS devices.

Taking a selection of iPhone game "styles" we will learn how to set the foundation and essential functionality for each game. Including thorough explanations of popular games such as puzzles, arcades, and adventures, as well as useful theoretical and technical concepts. iPhone Game Blueprints is your complete guide to creating great iPhone games, from a simple gesture game to a classic shoot 'em up.

iPhone Game Blueprints guides you through the universe of mobile games, starting with the overall information about game ideas, ergonomic aspects, and much more. Then it switches to a description of each particular game type, presenting ready-to-use ideas and applications.

This book will take you through a selection of iPhone game styles and show how to create the foundation and essential functionality for a game of that genre.The examples in this book are only the beginning.

Including a deluge of practical tips, focusing on the best approach to game design, not forgetting to mention the pitfalls. iPhone Game Blueprints will give you the blueprints of several mobile game's essentials cores. Whether you're just getting started with gaming, or want to try a whole different genre of game, these blueprints are everything you need.

Approach

iPhone Game Blueprints is a practical, hands-on guide with step-by-step instructions leading you through a number of different projects, providing you with the essentials for creating your own iPhone games

Who this book is for

This book is for graphic designers, developers, illustrators, and simple enthusiasts, who dream about the creation of mobile games or who have already worked in that domain, but need some additional inspiration and knowledge. This book can be considered as an illustrated handbook, worth having in your game development studio. It can work as a "paper art-director" for your project.

iPhone Game Blueprints

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Table of Contents

iPhone Game Blueprints

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Starting the Game

Telling a story

Characters

Levels

Naming

Working with graphic assets

Sprites and tiles

Preparing animation

Background

Application icon

Achievements

Trophies

Banners

Screenshots

Gameplay videos

Summary

2. Ergonomics

Portraying the player

Ergonomic aspects

Simple rules

Distance to the game

The Pause button

Autosaving

The Continue button

Visibility of the control elements

Direct control

Introducing functionalities

Health regeneration

Peaks and valleys

One event per moment

Difficulty level

Sound and music

Minimum screen areas

Using buttons

UI elements

Accessible games

Color blindness

Photosensitive epilepsy

Handedness

Other accessibility issues

Summary

3. Gesture Games

Introducing the game idea

Imagining the device orientation

Introducing game modes

Gestures

Intuition

Lights

Thinking about the plot and decorations

Alternative ideas

Creating a game's identity

Game blueprints

Summary

4. Card and Board Games

The ornament of life

Powerful objects

Traditional board games

Planning your digital board game

The Plot

Game elements and goals

Game start

The game board

Decks

Robots

Doors

Tools and bonuses

Monsters

The game table

Robo-golem

Robo-zombie

Alternative ideas

Player's identity

Game blueprints

Summary

5. Puzzles

Making connections

Puzzle types

Word puzzles

Number (mathematical) puzzles

Audio puzzles

Transport puzzles

Point connection puzzles

Physics-based puzzles

Tile-matching puzzles

Match-three games

Game board dimensions

Triggers

Scoring

Prototyping your puzzle

Inserting elements

Tile shooter

Scrolling

Moving columns

Tile-o-fall

Obstacles

Tile-o-maze

Tile-RPG

Ornamentation

Alternative ideas for match-three games

The identity of the game

Blueprints

Summary

6. Platformer

Scaffolding

Types of platforms

Game idea

Plot

Game controls

Setting the screen layout

Planning a character's look

Making characters cute

Making characters scary

Making characters brutal

Avoiding the uncanny valley

Creating characters

Earning bonuses and pitfalls

Introducing triggers

Fighting with enemies

Parallax scrolling

Starting an animation

Frames

Walking cycle for protagonist

Walking cycle animation for enemies

Jumping and shooting animation

Programming animation

Physics-based puzzles

The identity of the game

Blueprints of the 3robopainter game

Summary

7. Adventure

Beginning of a journey

Understanding types of adventure games

Text-based adventure

Puzzle-based adventure

Action-based adventure

Escape the room

Planning the setting

Establishing the game idea

Writing the plot

Introducing the protagonist

Planning the room

Interaction

Language of adventures

Thinking about puzzles

Creating the scene flowchart

Presenting the inventory

Monologues

Dialogues

Constructing the conversation tree

Working with phrases

Creating the dialogue window

Alternative ideas

Identity for the game

Blueprints

Summary

8. Action Games

Introducing action games

Classifying the types of shooters

Fixed shooters

Scrolling shooter

Rail shooter

First-person shooter

Third-person shooter

Mixed shooters

Generating the game idea

Writing the plot

Planning game modes

Developing the protagonist

Designing enemies

Preparing obstacles

Illustrating collisions

Inserting anomalies

Giving bonuses

Introducing health and oxygen

Introducing energy cells

Shooting

Working with onscreen controls

Turning space orientation into controls

Designing the head-up display

Discussing 3D graphics

Turning low poly graphics into art

Modeling 3D graphics

Understanding normal mapping

Alternative ideas for the game

Creating the identity for the game

Blueprints of the game

Summary

9. Games with Reality

Seeing real unreal

Learning augmented reality methods

Understanding fiducial markers

Working with graphics in AR games

Meeting AR games

Using real landmarks

Planning an AR game

The concept of an AR game

Planning game controls

Controlling real objects

Gamificating reality

Summary

Index

iPhone Game Blueprints

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: December 2013

Production Reference: 1191213

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-84969-026-3

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Rogix (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Igor Uduslivii

Reviewers

Robbyn Blumenschein

Zbigniew Kominek

Clifford Matthew Roche

Acquisition Editors

David Barnes

Joanne Fitzpatrick

Lead Technical Editor

Anila Vincent

Technical Editors

Pragnesh Bilimoria

Veena Pagare

Ankita Thakur

Proofreaders

Ameesha Green

Paul Hindle

Stephen Swaney

Copy Editors

Alisha Aranha

Brandt D'Mello

Tanvi Gaitonde

Gladson Monteiro

Karuna Narayanan

Kirti Pai

Shambhavi Pai

Alfida Paiva

Project Coordinator

Shiksha Chaturvedi

Indexer

Mehreen Deshmukh

Production Coordinator

Manu Joseph

Cover Work

Manu Joseph

About the Author

Igor Uduslivii is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer with more than a decade's experience in this domain. He specializes in artwork for mobile games and UI graphics such as icons and buttons. Currently, he cooperates with Spooky House Studios UG (haftungsbeschränkt), a game development company that has created popular puzzle titles such as Bubble Explode and Rail Maze.

Right from his early years, he was passionate about drawing, computers, and video games. As a child, he liked to create illustrations by traditional painting methods as well as designing simple 8-bit games. After completing his studies from the Republican Colegiul de Informatica in Chisinau, Moldova, he began his career as an editor at Electronic Office publishing house, writing articles about new technologies and particularly, computer graphics. In parallel, he started studying Flash technology and animation. After that, he began actively working as a media designer, creating promo animations and Flash games. Igor also worked on the graphical look of software products, designing visual identities and UI elements. Among his clients were Kaspersky Lab, Reasoft, LemonStand, and many others. By now, most of his time is taken up by games. He is working on a full bunch of graphics, such as the application icon, characters, background art, props, textures, and animations.

He is fond of design as an art form and pursues it as a hobby, developing various concepts in the domain of print and simple industrial design elements. In fact, all the images (except the screenshots for games and the photos) that appear in this book are designed by him. He also worked as the main graphic artist for mobile games such as Blueprint3D, Rail Maze, and Bubble Explode. One of his projects called Jackets and Bookmarks was showcased at the Kleinefabriek exhibition at Amsterdam in 2010.

I would like to thank my family for their patience and endorsements during the process of creating this book. I would also like to thank Andrei Gradinari, Pavel Carpov, and Kostya Stankevych for their help and support.

About the Reviewers

Robbyn Blumenschein has a Bachelor of Science degree in Game Art and Design. She has done an internship at IPlay, a mobile game company, and has worked as a freelancer since graduation. She is recently working on a project (developing and designing) that is a cross platform for funding startup companies She received second place for the first competition for Z-place Technologies Inc.

Zbigniew Kominek is an experienced software developer who loves pure and tested code. He started his professional experience with client/server applications. After a few years, he made his dream come true and started working as an iOS game developer. One of the titles he worked on is the award-winning Bridgy Jones game. Now, he continues to pursue his passion for game development with Unity.

Dawid Szczepaniak (Executive Creative Director and Partner at VML Poland) says, "Zbigniew is one of the best...

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• iPhone Game Blueprints