Useful books on the development of mobile games on Android and iOS

You have decided to start developing mobile games. Where to begin? Most programmers in game devs did not go to educational institutions specializing only in games. Rather, it was some kind of analogue of GeekUniversity with video lessons or an independent path that began with a huge number of favorite games, parsing mechanics, courses in general on mobile development, honing the found algorithms in simple toys created for the first portfolio.

Regardless of the chosen path, sooner or later there will be a need to connect another source of knowledge, and here you can think about books. Keep in mind that no book on mobile development replaces practice. In large articles on game development you may not find the word “book” at all. However, books have a definite advantage over articles - it is easy to sort them by rating and select the best ones.

So, the books will not replace your real combat courses, but they can be a good help and an additional source of knowledge. From the books we select the best, and then we sort by your language and scope.

Android

Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform 4th Edition

Since 2010, “Hello, Android” lives and is updated, starting to acquaint you with the basics of the world of this mobile platform. From the first chapter, the book will show how to create a working application: “Hello, World” for Android with zero knowledge.

This is followed by an example of the simplest mobile game Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe - a tic-tac-toe simulator with several different modes. Gradually adding features to the game, you will learn the basics of developing for Android: create a user interface, make audio and video support, add graphics using 2D and 3D OpenGL, learn how to store data using SQLite, and learn how to publish the finished game application to Google Play

Learning Java by Building Android Games - Explore Java Through Mobile Game Development

This book is also focused on beginners, so you get a simple and accessible presentation of material about the Java language, its basic API and OOP. Learning Java by Building Android Games is designed to teach you Java about the game creation process. You will create 4 games for your smartphone and tablet: a math test game, a memory game in the style of " Simon " and two games in a retro arcade style.

From the book, you will learn how to set up the Android Studio development environment, create your own Android interface, enter pixel graphics, clicks, animations, sound effects and much more into games. Yes, and learn Java from scratch to a degree sufficient to create your own games.

Beginning Android Games

The book introduces the principles of creating a basic game engine and games that will work on different versions of smartphones and tablets. "Beginning Android Games" is suitable not only for beginners, but also for experienced programmers - the benefit is that there is a lot of information on 714 pages. Please note that there may be errors in the code examples from the book - if you learn by the “copy / paste” method, without thinking about the meaning of what is happening, nothing good will come of it.

Android NDK Game Development Cookbook

A relatively short (320 pages) book on the Android NDK development kit (native development kit). Android NDK is a set of tools that allow you to implement in C and C ++ the part of your application that requires direct access to system resources. Android NDK is also used to create games.

The book outlines step-by-step recipes to help start the development of mobile games using the Android NDK, as well as some popular C ++ libraries. In fact, you can create a full-fledged mobile gaming application in C ++.

You will learn how to write portable multithreaded C ++ code, use your language skills in mobile development, play audio files, use OpenGL ES for rendering and recognize gestures. For a book, you must have at least basic knowledge of C / C ++.

The book was written by authors from Russia - Sergey Kosarevsky, who was engaged in mobile development at SPB Software, Yandex, Layar and Blippar, and Victor Latypov, who has experience in developing compilers, drivers, and programming for robotics.

The Beginner's Guide to Android Game Development

Do you know java? The answer to this question is not so important. When reading and studying the materials in this book, it does not matter whether you are a beginner or an experienced Java programmer. The Beginner's Guide offers enough information for you to start making your own game from scratch.

In this tutorial, you will find the theory and practice of individual fundamental concepts, set out in stages - on the chapter on the basic principles of Java and OOP. The book provides access to an extensive library of examples of Java-games and Android-games through its website, so that you can continue learning yourself. All code samples from the book are available under the MIT license on the author’s website .

Android Game Programming by Example

This book is mainly focused on Java-programmers and any others who already have development experience for Android, who would like to adapt their skills to create mobile games.

The book teaches the creation of simple game engines for various types of games, the introduction of advanced AI characters, drawing game objects, HUD, sound generation and playback, seamless level changing, etc. For fast and smooth frame synchronization, OpenGL ES 2 is used. By the end of the book, you will have three full-fledged games for lessons.

Android Design Patterns: Interaction Design Solutions for Developers

If you are an experienced mobile game developer, but want to improve your skills, this book will give you various programming patterns. The author offers more than 60 basic patterns of design and processing of complex aspects, such as the main menu, search, forms, sorting, filters, navigation, and so on.

The book also contains 12 antipatterns, including common mistakes that programmers often make in games. Templates cover the most complex types of user interactions, and each of them is vividly illustrated in step-by-step instructions.

Professional Android 4 Application Development 3rd Edition

The book was published 5 years ago, but one cannot say that it is radically outdated. This edition and now remains an excellent addition to any source of knowledge on the basics of programming on Android. Some ideas could be implemented better using modern technologies, but this is a small minus.

You’ll get an 850-page tutorial written by Reto Meier, one of Google’s leading developers, that demonstrates the capabilities of the Android SDK. If you are an experienced developer, you can quickly create your own games. Beginners will first learn the interface of the Android application, and then step by step explore all the possibilities of the axis. A big plus of the book is that you can choose the section that interests you the most and read the selected fragment immediately.

The book is translated into Russian.

Mobile Game Development with Unity: Build Once, Deploy Anywhere 1st Edition

A practical guide on how to create interactive applications for iOS and Android devices on the Unity engine. Authors make an overview of Unity's capabilities with a focus on examples of using them in real game situations. You will create your own game using the example of a three-dimensional simulator of a combat spacecraft.

iOS

Game Development with Swift

The book begins with an introduction to the best Swift game development features. Then you will learn how to revive sprites and textures, integrate with the Apple Game Center, publish ready-made games on the App Store, and more. Finally, you can create your own iOS games using Swift and SpriteKit. You should be familiar with basic programming concepts, but Swift knowledge or familiarity with the Apple ecosystem is not required - you can start from scratch.

In addition to this book, you can start learning the language from the Swift Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guides or the Swift Essentials - Second Edition manual. Both publications are beginner friendly, and they will teach you the basics of Swift, no matter how you use the language.

But if you want to deepen your knowledge in iOS development and you need a complete reference guide, pay attention to the book " iOS 11 Swift Programming Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for iOS Apps ".

Swift 3 Game Development - Second Edition

In 2017, the book Swift 3 Game Development received an update and now begins with the new features SpriteKit and Swift, which can be used to develop games. After setting up the first Swift project, you will learn how to draw, animate your game, and add physical simulations.

To make your game more exciting and interesting, you need to be able to customize scenes and backgrounds, add characters, create menus, and integrate with the Apple Game Center to use ratings and achievements.

All the code in the book is explained or written in such a way that you understand it well and realize how to use similar concepts in personal projects.

iOS Swift Game Development Cookbook: Simple Solutions for Game Development Problems

Another edition that has received a fresh update. The book contains detailed recipes for managing a wide range of common problems of iOS game development: from 2D and 3D math to SpriteKit and OpenGL - all of them are revised for Swift. You get simple, straightforward examples of solutions to common problems encountered when programming games. The book deals with the creation and customization of menus using UIKit Detect, methods of playing sound effects and music, various ways of storing data, mathematical difficulties of physical modeling, game AI, interaction with game controllers and external displays.

For this book, you will need basic knowledge in the areas of iOS programming, Swift, and Objective-C.

Beginning iOS Game Development

With the book by Patrick Alessi, many started (and begin) development for iOS. In Beginning iOS Game Development for beginners, the iOS system architecture, design, animation, sounds, and many other elements are presented, which are a universal constructor from which you build your own game.

Does not require any experience creating games for the iOS platform. The book will show how to work with the Xcode environment, draw using the Quartz 2D API, handle animation with Core Animation and sound using Core Audio.

Swift Game Programming for Absolute Beginners

The name speaks for itself. Before the start of this book, Swift can never be seen. You will have many lessons on creating four different games, from arcade to puzzle (Painter, Tut's Tomb, Penguin Pairs, Tick Tick). In “Swift Game Programming for Absolute Beginners,” they follow the structure of the game more than the syntax of the language — you can learn Swift, but in the context of games. Actually, even with games, special acquaintance is not required - the book teaches you how to create games for iOS without any previous experience with the gameplay.

Learning Unreal Engine iOS Game Development

The games on the Unreal Engine are made in a wide variety of genres and, of course, they were adapted for a mobile platform. Learning Unreal Engine iOS Game Development teaches the basics of developing optimized games for iOS using the Unreal Engine 4. The book does not focus on creating content and shows the capabilities of the engine for 2D games to demonstrate the concept of scripts, which you can later apply to creating your own 2D or 3D games. This is not a comprehensive reference, but if you want to start somewhere, take note of several aspects of the UE 4 engine, which you will definitely use in future work.

Beginning Swift Games Development for iOS

The book focuses on working with the SpriteKit game 2D engine optimized for creating games for devices from Apple. Actually, the Apple engine itself was introduced in iOS 7. The second half of the book concerns the development of 3D games using the Apple SceneKit framework and the Swift language.

After studying the book, you should get two ready-made gaming applications ... But for the beginning, knowledge of Objective-C will not be over.

Conclusion

Of course, not all good books on mobile development are collected here. Every person with experience in game development will have his own special “top books”, which he personally considers the most optimal. If you have examples of good publications and you consider them suitable for beginners - share the links in the comments. Examples of good adaptations to the Russian language are also welcome - it so happened that in today's compilation there are vanishingly few examples with translations.