Prerequisite to know before working on cocos2d-iphone or game programmign in general

Question

Ok i am also one of those who are trying to make their first game esp for Iphone but i have no clue from where to start. I never work on such application before (graphics stuff). It's totally different paradigm for me.

I google around, and came to know that opengl will be required, then it cam out there is something called cocos2d-iphone is around to make games also.

But i really dont know what i should read before even looking into opengl and cocos2d-iphone because they look totally alien to me.

What really makes/construct a game? there are sound, characters, movement. How you can make those sound and characters? what skills are required to make these things?

Every lesson of opengl starts from making those triangles but i really dont get how i can make a GAME from these triangle knowledge?

I know i am asking many questions within one, but i dont know how to put it otherwise.

Is there any guide out there which can teach some guy like me how a game is actually made, i mean from start to the end!

Lets take this game for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oovCmnuKA1A

No this game has a voice, then he is using the "accelerometer" to move the big thing around or using touch event to move that big thing which hold other 3 objects from dropping.

There is lot of art work is required, how it is made? Sorry i am totally naive about this, so may have asked some stupid question. Sorry.

Answer 1

What really makes/construct a game? there are sound, characters, movement. How you can make those sound and characters? what skills are required to make these things?

To make sounds requires either buying a clip library or recording some sounds yourself. If you want to get really into it you can load those recorded samples and mess them about in a piece of audio software such as Adobe audition. There are cheaper, but not as good, alternatives running down to Audacity which is free but quite limited by comparison to audition.

To make graphics requires a paint package of some sort. You could use anything. Whatever you can draw well in. Adobe Photoshop is a favourite but, again, is very expensive. You can potentially buy in sprites from someone, or if you aren't aiming to do anything more than a learning project, you could just rip off sprites from another game.

Well to make sounds you either need a mic or some serious sound design skills. Depends on how "good" you want them. Good enough is a lto less hassle. As for the art work that requires some artistic skills. Not something that can be learnt in my experience. You either have them or you don't.

Beyond that there is some work that comes to making the characters "feel" real. This requires programming abilities. Again the simpler your characters are the less knowledge you need. You will still require a reasonable amount of programming know-how and basic maths skills though.

Every lesson of opengl starts from making those triangles but i really dont get how i can make a GAME from these triangle knowledge?

There are many free sprite engines out there. Do a google search for sprite engines. You may be surprised how much you can have taken off you by doing this.

No this game has a voice, then he is using the "accelerometer" to move the big thing around or using touch event to move that big thing which hold other 3 objects from dropping.

Bear in mind that using an accelerometer is harder than it seems. I've not used the iPhone but on Wii you just get a set of 3 scalars out that indicate a, sort of, direction vector. You can then plug this direction vector into your game to make things happen. This isn't a simple bit of programming though. It always surprises me how much time you can lose to getting the "feel" of something like this right.

Good luck! Don't let the above put you off. Its totally doable. Set realistic targets and expect it to take you a lot longer than you imagine and you will learn so much from it.

Answer 2

i have no clue from where to start

This set of iPhone game tutorials by Michael Daley is a fantastic place to start. He walks you through the process of building your own game engine much like Cocos2D. Along the way you can learn a lot about:

• Objective C and iPhone programming
• Game Loops
• Sprite Sheets
• Sound Effects
• Animation
• Tile Maps
• Particle Generators

and lots of other game development concepts that the triangle tutorials won't give you.

Cocos2D is really powerful and has classes for handling all of these things but they aren't much use to you when you don't know what they are to begin with - these tutorials will help with that.

Then, just as Goz said, it's about setting some goals and going for it. When you're starting out, it doesn't matter if you use scratchy hand drawn sprites and crackly self recorded sound effects. Just study up, start making something on your own and trawl the forums when you run into trouble.

Best of luck.

Update: Just found this link to a free chapter of the iPhone Games Projects book http://www.apress.com/book/downloadfile/4448

It shows you how to use Cocos2D to make a tetris style game.