|  | Author: PJ Cabrera
Publisher: Apress
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $18.85
as of 11/23/2009 04:58 CST details
You Save: $21.14 (53%)
New (31) Used (9) from $18.85
Seller: feathersbooks
Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 147165
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 280
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.9 x 0.8
ISBN: 1430219688
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.26
EAN: 9781430219682
ASIN: 1430219688
Publication Date: June 29, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Fast shipping!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 16-20 of 26
 Worst book ever i even seen July 8, 2009
Agha Khan (Bellevue, WA United States)
7 out of 14 found this review helpful
The worst book I ever seen. I wish I could give this book negative 10 stars. I wanted to learn something form book about IPhone games, not the stories of creation. Apress should be ashamed to publish such book. It is not even worth looking at it.
 Great for starting iPhone game development July 7, 2009
n_dubbs (Pittsburgh, PA United States)
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
I ordered this book to better understand game development on the iPhone. I've been developing iPhone apps for about 6 months, and this book was just what I needed! Reading this book has helped me to get into the game development mindset and provide me with useful information. The chapters in this book range from planning level maps to multi-platform development to social networking enhancements to game optimization. The colored print pages are a very nice touch. If you are looking for a book to spoon feed you code and create a game for you, then this is not your book. This book does provide coding examples to help get you on your way, but more importantly it helps you to think like a game developer.
PJ Cabera and the other reputable developers have put together an amazing book.
 Has the distinction of containing the worst chapter ever for a computer book July 6, 2009
Abdulelah Dandachi (Saudi Arabia)
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
Anyone looking to learn design methodologies that are unique to the iPhone will be disappointed by this book. Too many pages are taken up with lengthy code examples that could be found on any number of forums and websites.
Although each chapter is written by individuals who have a record of having created successful applications for the iPhone, with the exception of the first chapter we learn very little in the way of design decisions and trade offs that allowed the applications to become as succeesful as they did.
Indeed, chapter 5, "Starting with a Game Design Document: A Methodology for Success", must rank as the most self serving and useless chapter I have ever read in a book related to computers. The chapter is little more than an excuse for the authors to peddle and market their company and applications, with next to no hints as to what makes for good iPhone app design.
And how many times must different authors tell us that the screen space on an iPhone or iPod touch is very limited? These chapters would have been better suited to some game development magazine or website.
 Grab bag of iPhone game dev July 3, 2009
Joel Davis
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
In the past, I have worked on game development projects on PC, xbox360, ps2, ps3 and Wii. Like many developers these days, I'm 'dipping my toes in the water' with casual iPhone game dev.
What I liked about this book:
First, the best thing about this book, and really what makes it worthwhile, is that it's written by people that are actually making their livelihood by developing games on the iPhone. So the advice is all very concrete, practical and the examples all come from the real world.
The technical advice ranges from very general stuff, to moderately technical. Often the advice is worthwhile to casual game dev in general, but not specific to iPhone.
The chapters that did provide code samples or downloads were very useful, and the code was good, real-world examples. The chapters tended to illustrate a particular tip or trick, which could be very helpful if that was something useful to you, but might be completely useless if not. For example, if (like myself) you are hoping to write games in C/C++ (mostly) that can be released on both iPhone and desktop, then the chapter on cross platform development is extremely helpful. But if you are targeting iPhone only, it's not very relevant.
Also, the quality of the book was very good, with full color illustrations throughout.
What I didn't like:
Calling this "Projects" is very misleading. Very few examples are 'projects', i.e. walking you through a tutorial-style project that you can recreate. If you are familiar with the "Game Programming Gems" series, then this book is much closer to that -- a collection of tips, tricks and techniques from practitioners.
Some of the advice (for example, the "Design Doc" chapter, or the "Interface Design" one) is good advice for game development, but not particularly specific for the iPhone. If you are familiar with the process of game development on another platform, a lot of this will be familiar advice.
In particular, I was disappointed not to see much discussion of the iPhone's unique input features like the accelerometers and multi-touch.
Overall, this is a good book but it has a bit of an identity crisis. Some of the articles are fairly technical, while others are appropriate for beginners (or even non-programmers "game designers"). There's a little something for everyone in here, but the flip side of that means that there will probably be a few chapters that you could live without.
Helpful, Insightful July 1, 2009
T. Novikoff (NYC/Ithaca)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I'm a first-time iPhone developer and found this book helpful. I
recommend it especially to people who are developing a game for the
first time, because that was my situation, although if I had to guess I would think it's actually even more helpful for more experienced developers.
Veteran developers explain a lot of the basics and not-so-basics of how to think about various issues like game design and optimization, but they do so via the story of their own development of their own apps. Each chapter is
about a very particular successful iPhone project.
I got lots of useful technical pointers, including code that I could actually use, but perhaps even more importantly I learned *how to think like an iphone developer*. Since I'm not in silicon valley but rather in a small town in Upstate NY with not too many kindred developers with whom to talk shop, this was invaluable!
So it's probably good for people who have already developed a few
games (there was stuff that was over my head but would probably be good for more experienced developers), but I especially recommend it to developers currently working on their first game, only because that was my situation and I found it very helpful. Going through it with a partner developer, book-club style, would also seem like a good idea, though I haven't done that or anything.
Showing reviews 16-20 of 26
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