iphone game blueprints

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iPhone Game Blueprints

Develop amazing games, visual charts, plots,

and graphics for your iPhone

Igor Uduslivii

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

www.it-ebooks.info

iPhone Game Blueprints

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

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However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: December 2013

Production Reference: 1191213

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-84969-026-3

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Cover Image by Rogix ([email protected])

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Credits

Author

Igor Uduslivii

Reviewers

Robbyn Blumenschein

Zbigniew Kominek

Clifford Matthew Roche

Acquisition Editors

David Barnes

Joanne Fitzpatrick

Lead Technical Editor

Anila Vincent

Technical Editors

Pragnesh Bilimoria

Veena Pagare

Ankita Thakur

Proofreaders

Ameesha Green

Paul Hindle

Stephen Swaney

Copy Editors

Alisha Aranha

Brandt D'Mello

Tanvi Gaitonde

Gladson Monteiro

Karuna Narayanan

Kirti Pai

Shambhavi Pai

Alfida Paiva

Project Coordinator

Shiksha Chaturvedi

Indexer

Mehreen Deshmukh

Production Coordinator

Manu Joseph

Cover Work

Manu Joseph

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About the Author

Igor Uduslivii is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer with more than

a decade's experience in this domain. He specializes in artwork for mobile games

and UI graphics such as icons and buttons. Currently, he cooperates with Spooky

House Studios UG (haftungsbeschränkt), a game development company that has

created popular puzzle titles such as Bubble Explode and Rail Maze.

Right from his early years, he was passionate about drawing, computers, and

video games. As a child, he liked to create illustrations by traditional painting

methods as well as designing simple 8-bit games. After completing his studies

from the Republican Colegiul de Informatica in Chisinau, Moldova, he began his

career as an editor at Electronic Office publishing house, writing articles about new

technologies and particularly, computer graphics. In parallel, he started studying

Flash technology and animation. After that, he began actively working as a media

designer, creating promo animations and Flash games. Igor also worked on the

graphical look of software products, designing visual identities and UI elements.

Among his clients were Kaspersky Lab, Reasoft, LemonStand, and many others.

By now, most of his time is taken up by games. He is working on a full bunch of

graphics, such as the application icon, characters, background art, props, textures,

and animations.

He is fond of design as an art form and pursues it as a hobby, developing various

concepts in the domain of print and simple industrial design elements. In fact, all the

images (except the screenshots for games and the photos) that appear in this book are

designed by him. He also worked as the main graphic artist for mobile games such as

Blueprint3D, Rail Maze, and Bubble Explode. One of his projects called Jackets and

Bookmarks was showcased at the Kleinefabriek exhibition at Amsterdam in 2010.

I would like to thank my family for their patience and endorsements

during the process of creating this book. I would also like to thank

Andrei Gradinari, Pavel Carpov, and Kostya Stankevych for their

help and support.

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About the Reviewers

Robbyn Blumenschein has a Bachelor of Science degree in Game Art and

Design. She has done an internship at IPlay, a mobile game company, and has

worked as a freelancer since graduation. She is recently working on a project

(developing and designing) that is a cross platform for funding startup companies

She received second place for the first competition for Z-place Technologies Inc.

Zbigniew Kominek is an experienced software developer who loves pure and

tested code. He started his professional experience with client/server applications.

After a few years, he made his dream come true and started working as an iOS game

developer. One of the titles he worked on is the award-winning Bridgy Jones game.

Now, he continues to pursue his passion for game development with Unity.

Dawid Szczepaniak (Executive Creative Director and Partner at VML Poland) says,

"Zbigniew is one of the best iOS developers I've ever met. He is highly skilled and

most of all, a mature and reliable person."

Gogula Gupta (Principal Software Engineer at Sabre) says "Zbyszek is a very talented

and passionate developer. He has extremely good technical knowledge and ability

to learn quickly. He delivers work with amazing speed and excellent quality. He has

very good personal skills too. It is very valuable to have him in the team."

Artur Staszczyk (Programmer at CD Projekt Red) says "Zbigniew is a very skilled

developer. Despite that his knowledge about design patterns and iOS programming

is enormous, he is always willing to learn new techniques. It was a pleasure working

with such experienced developer; he was a valuable member of our team."

I would like to thank my wife Ola. Her patience and support during

tough moments gave me the strength to work hard and accomplish

everything I wanted to do.

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Clifford Matthew Roche is a self-taught game programmer who has been

working on AAA projects since 2008, focusing on engine development, performance,

and animation. He is credited on several games including NHL 09, FIFA 10, and

MotionSports: Adrenaline.

Recently, he started his own game development company, Firestarter Games,

where he works to bring high-quality games to mobile devices and consoles with

Unity 3D. The company's first project, Globulous, was nominated for Best Audio

(Casual/Indie) at the Audio Network Guild Music Awards.

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Table of Contents

Preface 1

Chapter 1: Starting the Game 7

Telling a story 7

Characters 13

Levels 15

Naming 16

Working with graphic assets 19

Sprites and tiles 21

Preparing animation 25

Background 27

Application icon 30

Achievements 37

Trophies 39

Banners 40

Screenshots 40

Gameplay videos 41

Summary 44

Chapter 2: Ergonomics 45

Portraying the player 45

Ergonomic aspects 46

Simple rules 47

Distance to the game 47

The Pause button 48

Autosaving 49

The Continue button 50

Visibility of the control elements 50

Direct control 50

Introducing functionalities 50

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Table of Contents

[ ii ]

Health regeneration 51

Peaks and valleys 51

One event per moment 51

Difficulty level 52

Sound and music 52

Minimum screen areas 53

Using buttons 55

UI elements 58

Accessible games 62

Color blindness 66

Photosensitive epilepsy 71

Handedness 73

Other accessibility issues 73

Summary 76

Chapter 3: Gesture Games 77

Introducing the game idea 79

Imagining the device orientation 85

Introducing game modes 86

Gestures 87

Intuition 87

Lights 88

Thinking about the plot and decorations 89

Alternative ideas 92

Creating a game's identity 93

Game blueprints 94

Summary 97

Chapter 4: Card and Board Games 99

The ornament of life 99

Powerful objects 102

Traditional board games 106

Planning your digital board game 108

The Plot 110

Game elements and goals 110

Game start 111

The game board 111

Decks 113

Robots 114

Doors 117

Tools and bonuses 117

Monsters 118

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Table of Contents

[ iii ]

The game table 121

Robo-golem 122

Robo-zombie 124

Alternative ideas 125

Player's identity 125

Game blueprints 126

Summary 128

Chapter 5: Puzzles 129

Making connections 129

Puzzle types 131

Word puzzles 131

Number (mathematical) puzzles 131

Audio puzzles 132

Transport puzzles 133

Point connection puzzles 134

Physics-based puzzles 135

Tile-matching puzzles 136

Match-three games 137

Game board dimensions 139

Triggers 140

Scoring 141

Prototyping your puzzle 142

Inserting elements 143

Tile shooter 144

Scrolling 145

Moving columns 147

Tile-o-fall 149

Obstacles 150

Tile-o-maze 151

Tile-RPG 154

Ornamentation 159

Alternative ideas for match-three games 161

The identity of the game 161

Blueprints 162

Summary 164

Chapter 6: Platformer 165

Scaffolding 165

Types of platforms 167

Game idea 170

Plot 171

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Table of Contents

[ iv ]

Game controls 173

Setting the screen layout 174

Planning a character's look 176

Making characters cute 177

Making characters scary 178

Making characters brutal 180

Avoiding the uncanny valley 181

Creating characters 184

Earning bonuses and pitfalls 186

Introducing triggers 187

Fighting with enemies 188

Parallax scrolling 188

Starting an animation 192

Frames 195

Walking cycle for protagonist 197

Walking cycle animation for enemies 202

Jumping and shooting animation 202

Programming animation 203

Physics-based puzzles 204

The identity of the game 205

Blueprints of the 3robopainter game 205

Summary 207

Chapter 7: Adventure 209

Beginning of a journey 209

Understanding types of adventure games 216

Text-based adventure 216

Puzzle-based adventure 216

Action-based adventure 217

Escape the room 218

Planning the setting 218

Establishing the game idea 219

Writing the plot 219

Introducing the protagonist 221

Planning the room 222

Interaction 225

Language of adventures 225

Thinking about puzzles 228

Creating the scene flowchart 230

Presenting the inventory 232

Monologues 234

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Table of Contents

[ v ]

Dialogues 236

Constructing the conversation tree 238

Working with phrases 241

Creating the dialogue window 244

Alternative ideas 246

Identity for the game 247

Blueprints 248

Summary 250

Chapter 8: Action Games 251

Introducing action games 251

Classifying the types of shooters 254

Fixed shooters 254

Scrolling shooter 255

Rail shooter 255

First-person shooter 255

Third-person shooter 256

Mixed shooters 257

Generating the game idea 257

Writing the plot 258

Planning game modes 259

Developing the protagonist 259

Designing enemies 261

Preparing obstacles 262

Illustrating collisions 263

Inserting anomalies 264

Giving bonuses 266

Introducing health and oxygen 267

Introducing energy cells 270

Shooting 271

Working with onscreen controls 274

Turning space orientation into controls 278

Designing the head-up display 280

Discussing 3D graphics 281

Turning low poly graphics into art 283

Modeling 3D graphics 285

Understanding normal mapping 288

Alternative ideas for the game 290

Creating the identity for the game 291

Blueprints of the game 292

Summary 293

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Table of Contents

[ vi ]

Chapter 9: Games with Reality 295

Seeing real unreal 295

Learning augmented reality methods 297

Understanding fiducial markers 300

Working with graphics in AR games 305

Meeting AR games 307

Using real landmarks 309

Planning an AR game 311

The concept of an AR game 318

Planning game controls 320

Controlling real objects 322

Gamificating reality 325

Summary 329

Index 331

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