Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The iOS SDK, the iOS Simulator, and the Cocoa touch frameworks come bundled with
Xcode. You do not need to download anything else to develop iOS or OS X apps. But you
may want to open Xcode Preferences and navigate to the Downloads pane to down-
load the offline documentation for faster access or offline access to the iOS SDK docu-
mentation. The documentation is also available online:
ht-
It is not necessary to register as an iOS Developer with Apple to learn from this topic.
Still I recommend it, even though it costs a fee of currently $99 per year. Being a re-
gistered Apple developer has many benefits, most importantly the ability to deploy and
test your app on an iOS device. If you plan on releasing your app to the App Store, you
should register now rather than later.
The iOS Simulator can be used to verify that your code functions, but it cannot measure
how well your app performs—questions regarding slow Simulator performance are
aplenty on the web. In short, iOS Simulator rendering performance is abysmal even on the
fastest Macs. Yet the Simulator will gladly use your Mac's multiple gigabytes of memory
and plenty of CPU time—much more than iOS devices provide. Plus your app can feel
very different when controlled by imprecise fingers covering parts of the screen, and you
can't simulate the accelerometer or multitouch gestures with the iOS Simulator.
In short, you cannot reliably test your game for being fun, easy to handle, precise to con-
trol, and having good performance without testing on an actual device. So while it's not
strictly necessary, it's highly recommended to sign up for the developer membership.
About SpriteBuilder
SpriteBuilder is a free, open-source visual design tool for OS X, created specifically to
work in combination with Cocos2d-Swift. Originally, it was conceived as CocosBuilder
by Viktor Lidholt and released in 2011. Viktor works for Apportable as the lead developer
on SpriteBuilder, and he is joined with an entire team working on both SpriteBuilder and
Cocos2D.
Many SpriteBuilder and Cocos2D developers actually work for Apportable, a company
that specializes in cross-compiling Objective-C code and, specifically, SpriteBuilder apps
for the Android platform. In the ideal case, you just take your iOS app and build it for
Android and it'll work, just like that. You'll find an introduction to the Android porting
process in
Chapter 13
.
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