If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at creating your very own iOS game, but had no idea where to start, then this upcoming online course may be a good place to start.
Born out of a very successful Kickstarter Campaign, iPhone expert and former Apple employee Paul Solt has developed a series of instructional courses to teach anyone how to develop their very own indie iPhone game in just 31 days.
Starting next week on January 26th, he will be launching his latest course, iPhone Games with Sprite Kit via his iPhoneDev.tv site. “Solt designed the 31-day course method to create an approachable yet challenging course involving succinct daily lecture videos and coding exercises for hands-on practice. Students will create a multitude of games and will also have access to high quality royalty-free art and sound to utilize in this course and for future endeavors.”
Paul has structured the course to make it approachable and manageable, while helping students to build up the critical skills they’ll need for more future projects.
The iPhone Games with Sprite Kit Course includes:
- Twenty 5-15 minute daily lecture videos
- Daily coding exercises for practice
- Weekend game development challenges
- Five-day final game competition
- Daily Q&A videos answering most frequently asked questions
- An active course forum where students can learn from each other
Course Topics
- Sprite Kit with Swift
- Physics and collisions
- Animations
- Game mechanics and movement
- SFX with particle effects
- Menus and screen transitions
- Scores, Game Center, and leaderboards
- In-app purchases for digital items
This course costs $99 and can be purchased on iPhoneDev.tv, but you can save 20% off that price using the following discount link http://learn.iphonedev.tv/course/make-iphone-games-with-sprite-kit-for-ios8/?couponCode=LaunchDaySale3092928.
I don’t have any experience with the course, but its sounds like it could be a pretty nice catalyst for new, would be developers. You can check out as sample video below if it sounds like something of interest to you. More info regarding all of Paul’s courses is available at iPhoneDev.tv.
In order to take part in the courses you will need to meet the following hardware/software requirements.
- To learn effectively you will need a Mac 2008+ ($500-$3,000) with Mountain Lion or Yosemite.
- Xcode 6 is a free download that will be available this fall, you can get the beta version here: https://developer.apple.com/swift/resources/
- It is possible to learn with a Windows PC, but you’ll have to use http://MacinCloud.com to use a Mac via Google Chrome ($20/month)
- If you want to install your app on your iPhone (or sell it!) you’ll have to signup for Apple’s developer program for $99/year. https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/
- If you’re on a budget, you can wait to signup for the $99/year developer program. You can Signup when you are ready to submit your app to the App Store.
