Mike Daley’s upcoming book iPhone Game Programming has been released as a rough cut (essentially a beta verson of the book).  You can read about it here: Learning iPhone Game Programming – available on Safari Rough Cuts.

[Source: 71 Squared]

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

The solution is from 71 Squared, and they’ve had a sound manager class included among their game programming tutorials for quite some time.  The original had a few hiccups, but I’m playing around with the new one right now, and it looks like they fixed things up.

Some cool functionality has been added for playlists, and all memory leaks are gone, you’ll love this thing it’s easy to use.  You can download the updated version here: Latest Sound Manager Class

The original tutorial and video for the sound manager can be found here: iPhone Game Programming Tutorial 9

Thanks again to 71 Squared, and I can’t wait for their book to come out.

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

Official Unity Resources – This is a wide collection of Unity iPhone resources including tutorials, sample projects, and the like.  The Unity 3D people have really done a great job putting all this together.  It’s really second to none when you look at the resources available for other iPhone game engines.  The place to start is the videos. I think this is a great example of what other engine/game creators should try to put together.

Infinite Unity 3D – This is a terrific resource, the creator who ran the DiamondTearz blog previously has now created this site exclusively for helping Unity 3D users.

Learn Unity 3D – Another great resource for Unity 3D info with some great video tutorials. The video tutorials along with some great Photoshop/PHP/Indesign tutorials can be found on Learn Me Silly.

UnifyCommunity Wiki – A great wiki that is a tremendous resource for those developing with Unity 3D.

Those are the most helpful resources that I’ve found for dealing with the Unity iPhone game engine, as I said the documentation/examples are extensive on the Unity 3D site so you will want to start with those, but it can be great to find other perspectives.

The engine has also made great strides since their initial iPhone release so if you didn’t like it initially (there were some performance issues that seem to have been alleviated) you will probably want to check into it again as it has really become the market leader for 3D game creation tools on the iPhone.  The iPhone version offers a free trial.

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.

Please note that this is only a feature comparison, as while I have tested out the editors of these engines (where available for free) I have not thoroughly tested these engines, however that being said I believe I can help in someone making an educated decision for those trying to choose between these engines.

Unity 3D – Unity 3D is the most popular commercial iPhone game engine, and has been used in many games.  Initially the iPhone version had some performance complaints, but it appears as though those issues were alleviated.  Unity allows you to use an extensive 3D editor with many scripts available and there is considerable community support available.  Another nice feature recently added to unity is that it allows you to use your Objective-C code, and it is the only one of these engines that appears to do so (so you can utilize libraries of your choosing within the iPhone SDK).  Unity 3d for iPhone costs a minimum of  $399 if you already own a copy of Unity Basic otherwise you will need to spend $199+$399 for Unity Basic + the iPhone license.

Stonetrip S3D – This is another full featured 3D game engine that has been used in high quality iPhone games.  There is a full featured 3D editor, and many scripts available along with large community support.  It is a great alternative to Unity as the costs are less, but I have an issue with the editor in that it will only run in Windows and this is something I have never liked about it. The base cost is 165 Euro. and this includes compilation options for the Mac, Windows, and iPhone platforms.

Bork 3D – This engine is touted by the developer as an engine for programmers.  It does not include a wysiwig content editor or scripting langue with pre-built scripts like the Stonetrip, and Unity engines, but does support 3DSMax, Maya and Collada.  The excellent Anytime Golf was created with Bork 3D which has terrific graphics.   The price is the lowest of all engines available at a base cost of $49.

Now onto the 2D Engines.  I’m a little hesitant to show these engines since the excellent Cocos2D is an excellent, and proven open source engine, but if you are a programmer and want to avoid programming as much as possible a wysiwyg editor is available with the following 2 engines.

Torque 2D for iPhone - This is from the makers of the famous Torque engine, and is essentially the Torque Game Builder ported to the iPhone platform.  This means that you can use the same tools as the Torque Game Builder in creating your game.  I found Torque Game Builder for the desktop to be excellent, although for the price I did not feel it was worth it with so many 2d wysiwyg game creators available, but on the iPhone those pickings are slim.  The cost for Torque2D begins at $750.

Game Salad – While this is definitely the easiest game creator to use on the Mac platform the iPhone support is in it’s infancy.  That being said the creators have published a few simplistic games to the app store, and recently released the "early access" version for the iPhone which was a very long time coming.  I’ve seen some performance complaints so I’m not sure how viable this is for iPhone game creation at this stage.  One advantage is that you can prototype your game for free, place it on the web, and see if people like it.  The minimum cost is $499 with iPhone publishing.  

In summary, I’d have to say Unity would be my choice for 3D engines, the community is unparalleled, and upgrades are frequent.  If you’re looking for a pure 2D game engine and must have a wysiwyg editor it appears as though Torque 2D is currently the only viable choice. 

©2010 iPhone iOS 4 iPad SDK Development Tutorials, Programming Tips, News. All Rights Reserved.