Learning to program is hard and one of the ways to make the process easier is by reading and using books. With our book reviews here at Switch On The Code we try to help you figure out which books are the best for any level of developer. In this review I’m going to go over the iOS game programming book Learning Cocos2D – A Hands-On Guide to Building iOS Games with Cocos2D, Box2D, and Chipmunk. written by Rod Strougo and Ray Wenderlich.
As with our other reviews we received the book free of charge from the publisher. This doesn’t mean I won’t give a book a bad review, I’m not that nice of a guy – just ask the other SOTC guys.
Learning Cocos2D: A Hands-On Guide to Building iOS Games with Cocos2D, Box2D, and Chipmunk
By Rod Strougo, Ray Wenderlich
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Pub. Date: Jun 22, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-73562-1
Pages: 640
List Price: $44.99
Buy it on Amazon
The first thing to say about the book is that aims at the developer who has some experience with the basic programming concepts and the tools surrounding iOS development. The main topic covered is Cocos2d, a 2D engine for creating iOS games, and also touches on Box2D and Chimpmunk – the two most popular physics libraries for iOS. The book is organized to help you create an entire game from beginning to end, along with a few other random smaller applications.
As you read through the book you’ll notice that the entire thing is basically one giant tutorial, the authors even mention this as a goal in the foreword. As you move through the book you continue to build a space viking themed game. Cocos2D is covered pretty thoroughly in the first 275 pages and then the more advanced physics topics are covered with building a level using Box2D and another using Chipmunk. I think this is an interesting way to do this because in a real game you would choose one physics library to use and create the entire experience using it. In the second to last chapter of the book the authors touch on gaming achievements and leaderboards using Game Center. The last chapter is dedicated to helping you get the maximum performance out of your games.
The book does a good job of going through the details of Cocos2D. As mentioned before, if you don’t know anything about programming for the iOS platform you’ll be lost for the most part. Game programming is inherently a complicated subject but approaching it using Cocos2D helps flatten the learning curve.
The authors have done a great job using code samples to step the reader through new concepts. As expected the complete source code is available, but not only that, the game in which you are creating throughout the book is available on the iOS app store.
There are a couple of items I didn’t love, the biggest is that the book reads very much like a college textbook, dry and without much emotion. Although, this is expected in a programming book. The other downside is that it only covers 2D games – again understandable considering Cocos2D is only a 2D engine.
I believe this book has excelled at what it was trying to do and am happy to recommend it to anyone who has some programming experience with iOS. I believe that an intermediate or expert programmer with little to no Cocos2D experience would get great use out of the book. We don’t give a score here, we simply say if we would recommend it for the different skill levels.
Beginners: Leave It
Even though it’s a good book I wouldn’t recommend it to a beginner because of the topics covered and there is no intro to iOS programming.
Intermediate: Get It
If you’re looking for a way to get into game programming and have an iOS development base this is the book for you.
Guru: Maybe
This is certainly for the programming guru who hasn’t spent a lot of time with Cocos2D and would quickly get you up to speed on the topic.
And if you looking for more iOS game programming books check out these: