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macOS Beginning MAC/IOS programming

A

alexandre16

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 21, 2011
72
0
Hi
I am new in MAC/IOS programming, and i want to know how to make MAC/IOS Apps (games,etc).
How i can start?
Buying and reading books?
other things?
what you recommend to me?

P.S: if the books are good to start tell me the name of best books to buy
:)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Last edited:
youtube

look at thenewboston on youtube he does a lot of basics for iphone programming
 
alexandre16 said:
Hi
I am new in MAC/IOS programming, and i want to know how to make MAC/IOS Apps (games,etc).
How i can start?
Buying and reading books?
other things?
what you recommend to me?

P.S: if the books are good to start tell me the name of best books to buy
Click to expand...

What kind of programming experience do you have already? Why type of games are you looking to make? You may need to look at a game engine such as Unity vs programming something from scratch (unless you want to spend forever in development).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
chrono1081 said:
What kind of programming experience do you have already? Why type of games are you looking to make? You may need to look at a game engine such as Unity vs programming something from scratch (unless you want to spend forever in development).
Click to expand...


Thanks for all to help

I dont have experience with iphone programming, but i know, php,mysql,html,ajax,css, visual basic, pascal/C.

I want to create games for example where a ball has gravity as in real life and to be launched from the air, it will
fall, and then will crash into objects and their behavior will change according to when hit, for example type
the bubble ball
Then I would also like to know how to ride a ball at random by the iPhone's screen but not be able to pass off the screen, a game type itennis with iteration with two bars that users
play against each other.
Basically I want to know where to play with much iteration objects.
The game I really liked to do was the kind of bubble ball
some tutorials,books or examples to see?
 
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alexandre16 said:
some tutorials,books or examples to see?
Click to expand...

Have you read all the links provided? They answer most of your questions.

From http://guides.macrumors.com/Cocoa_FAQ

What book do you recommend for learning Cocoa?
The most popular book is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, by Aaron Hillegass and has been updated for Leopard, Xcode3 and Objective-C 2.0. Another recommended book is Programming in Objective C 2.0 by Steve Kochan which does not require any previous programming experience.
Click to expand...

B
 
Beyond the basics, you'll need OpenGL ES. There are books out there, but I have no specific recommendations. From there, you may need to read up on some physics. I definitely don't have recommendations on that.

-Lee
 
lee1210 said:
Beyond the basics, you'll need OpenGL ES. There are books out there, but I have no specific recommendations. From there, you may need to read up on some physics. I definitely don't have recommendations on that.
Click to expand...

Or, as was recommended by chrono1081, pick an appropriate game engine and learn how to use that with their docs.

B
 
I'm beginning to buy the book that everyone who is recommending this "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie to start learning iphone language
but as I also enjoyed learning to create games for iphone like to advise me whether any more
book that teaches to make games for the iphone, I'll start learning the language and would like to know the following,
which set of books that advise me to buy in order to understand language and make applications and games
for iphone?
But just want the books are really good
Thanks for all help :)

P.S First i only want to make 2d games
 
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alexandre16 said:
and about creating games?
Click to expand...

For creating games if you want to do the long route that won't cost you anything except for some books maybe, do this:

Objective-C -> CocoaTouch -> Cocos2D -> OpenGLES 2.0

For the Objective-C book, this is usually what most people recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Objective-C-2-0-Stephen-Kochan/dp/0321566157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295821574&sr=8-1-spell

Get good at this book and then go to this book for Cocoa Touch (no skipping! It will hurt you when you get into games):

http://www.amazon.com/iPhone-Programming-Ranch-Guide-Guides/dp/0321706242/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295821636&sr=1-1

Once you go through the two above books, this book will give you a lot of decent information about how to make games, things that go into them like surfaces, timers, collision detection, etc:

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Games-Development-Cabrera/dp/1430225998/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295821705&sr=1-2

Once you go through these three books you will be able to make games. I'd recommend though after these three books start learning Cocos2D for 2D games and then OpenGL ES 2.0 for 3D games. I can't recommend books for these two though since I don't have any.

Even though this route is longer you will learn much more and be better at game development.

If you want instant results you could get a game engine like Unity3D but you'll be paying $400 for the iOS version and if your not familiar with building games it may be of some trouble. There are tutorials and such but the documentation (in my opinion) is lacking a little bit so you may run into trouble if your not familiar with the basics of what makes a game. I love Unity and its my favorite engine but if you aren't familiar with scripting, or no what things like ray casting or mesh colliders are you won't be able to do much in it.


EDIT: One more book that is very useful for the physics aspect of games, as well as some basics on 3D is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Math-Physics-Game-Programmers/dp/0131687425/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295822052&sr=1-1

This book has a lot of handy equations to keep with you that can help you a lot when trying to do physics. Its no replacement for learning the actual physics but it has code examples on how to implement said physics. Also I'm not sure why its only a 3 star review on Amazon I only found one typo in the entire book so I'm not sure why the reviews say "riddled with errors!" Everything worked for me. Mind you though this book is to get your feet wet. For more advanced topics in this area check out the 3D Math Primer (EXCELLENT Book).

http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Graphics-Development-Wordware-Library/dp/1556229119/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295822358&sr=1-1
 
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Which book?

I do not know what I will buy, can you help me? the books are similar or have differences?
Click to expand...

I think you could have done this.

From wikipedia:
Objective-C is a reflective, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language.
Click to expand...

From Amazon on C Programming Language:
Presents a complete guide to ANSI standard C language programming. Written by the developers of C, this new version helps readers keep up with the finalized ANSI standard for C while showing how to take advantage of C's rich set of operators, economy of expression, improved control flow, and data structures. This 2nd edition has been completely rewritten with additional examples and problem sets to clarify the implementation of difficult language constructs. 7 x 9 1/4.
Click to expand...

From Amazon on Programming in Objective-C 2.0:
Programming in Objective-C 2.0 provides the new programmer a complete, step-by-step introduction to Objective-C, the primary language used to develop applications for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS X platforms.



The book does not assume previous experience with either C or object-oriented programming languages, and it includes many detailed, practical examples of how to put Objective-C to use in your everyday iPhone/iPad or Mac OS X programming tasks.


A powerful yet simple object-oriented programming language that’s based on the C programming language, Objective-C is widely available not only on OS X and the iPhone/iPad platform but across many operating systems that support the gcc compiler, including Linux, Unix, and Windows systems.



The second edition of this book thoroughly covers the latest version of the language, Objective-C 2.0. And it shows not only how to take advantage of the Foundation framework’s rich built-in library of classes but also how to use the iPhone SDK to develop programs designed for the iPhone/iPad platform.
Click to expand...
 
alexandre16 said:
I do not know what I will buy, can you help me? the books are similar or have differences?
Click to expand...

Everyone learns things differently, so it's hard to predict. Amazon lets you peek inside both of those books, so do that and see what style you prefer.

K&R is a very dry book with few examples, it'll teach you C if you "click" with it. If you don't it will bore you to tears. (JMHO).

Kochan is more example driven and doesn't assume any previous programming experience. If you click with that it will be a shorter path to actually building your own Objective-C 2.0 apps for the Mac and iPhone.

You should still back-fill with some C book, be it K&R. Kochan's book on C, etc...

B
 
I'll buy this to learn c (C Programming Language (2nd Edition) [Paperback]
Brian W. Kernighan (Author), Dennis M.) but this book is the second edition, should have the first edition also right?or does not exist?

I want the perfects books to know perfectly about this language.

First,I first want to determine which books of c language that I need to master the language
 
alexandre16 said:
I'll buy this to learn c (C Programming Language (2nd Edition) [Paperback]
Brian W. Kernighan (Author), Dennis M.) but this book is the second edition, should have the first edition also right?or does not exist?
Click to expand...
The second edition is fine. It's just an updated version of the first edition.

alexandre16 said:
I want the perfects books to know perfectly about this language.
Click to expand...
There is no perfect. There are far too many variables involved that would allow a single book (or, really, even multiple books) to be able to educate every single reader perfectly. And if your goal is to learn Objective-C, then there is no need to learn the entire C Language perfectly, at least IMHO.

alexandre16 said:
First,I first want to determine which books of c language that I need to master the language
Click to expand...
To confuse matters even more, there's also this book: "Learn C on the Mac"
 
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alexandre16 said:
Thanks for all to help

I dont have experience with iphone programming, but i know, php,mysql,html,ajax,css, visual basic, pascal/C.

I want to create games for example where a ball has gravity as in real life and to be launched from the air, it will
fall, and then will crash into objects and their behavior will change according to when hit, for example type
the bubble ball
Then I would also like to know how to ride a ball at random by the iPhone's screen but not be able to pass off the screen, a game type itennis with iteration with two bars that users
play against each other.
Basically I want to know where to play with much iteration objects.
The game I really liked to do was the kind of bubble ball
some tutorials,books or examples to see?
Click to expand...

Depending on your existing level of programming competence, you could take a look at Box2D for the iPhone. There are many samples and tutorials out there (I won't list them here, just google "Box2D iPhone"). You could learn a lot just by going through those examples and tweaking the code.

However, it still is important to learn about iOS memory management, you won't get far without it.
 
l every time I'm more confused: s
liked to ask the following:
I'm starting to plan for iphone mac and never programmed for both platforms, and I want to develop games 2d iphone like bubble ball, itennis, angry birds, that type of games, can someone tell me the set of books should I buy to be good and sufficient grounds to make games for the iphone? say the list of books I need for this
Thanks for all help :)
 
Take a look at the post I posted above, the first three books I list have all you need for what your goal is.

The other two books are simply to take your knowledge further.
 
chrono1081 said:
Take a look at the post I posted above, the first three books I list have all you need for what your goal is.
Click to expand...
To reiterate.

Perhaps more explicitly this is what chrono1081 suggests.

Start with Kochan and finish it: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-O...6157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295914183&sr=8-1

Add Conway and Hillegass for Cocoa Touch: http://www.amazon.com/iPhone-Progra...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295914216&sr=8-1

Add Cabrera et al. for game specific stuff once you are familiar with Cocoa Touch. http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPh...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295914269&sr=1-1

Your experience may vary. As I pointed out several folks starting with Kochan found it boring and not useful.

B
 
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balamw said:
To reiterate.

Perhaps more explicitly this is what chrono1081 suggests.

Start with Kochan and finish it: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-O...6157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295914183&sr=8-1

Add Conway and Hillegass for Cocoa Touch: http://www.amazon.com/iPhone-Progra...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295914216&sr=8-1

Add Cabrera et al. for game specific stuff once you are familiar with Cocoa Touch. http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPh...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295914269&sr=1-1

Your experience may vary. As I pointed out several folks starting with Kochan found it boring and not useful.

B
Click to expand...
I should read to get the first C language and then Objective C language or just start by Objective C language?
 
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