IPhone Game Developing Questions

I decided that I wanted to try making games for the iPhone. I've read about it a little but I have some questions.
1. What programming language is easiest to learn?
2. Are there any kits that can he helpful for a complete beginner?
3. Can I do all of this on a PC?
4. Are there any limitations on 2-D games?

Thanks in advance for anyone who helps.

Conan Edogawa said:

I decided that I wanted to try making games for the iPhone. I've read about it a little but I have some questions.
1. What programming language is easiest to learn?
2. Are there any kits that can he helpful for a complete beginner?
3. Can I do all of this on a PC?
4. Are there any limitations on 2-D games?

Thanks in advance for anyone who helps.

Click to expand...

1)No idea
2)Doubt it
3)Absolutely not
4)Pretty sure the answer is no

Hope I helped...sorta :P

Um well..
1. Java or C++
2.The Apple SDK (Maybe)
3.Yes you can
4.You can't get the feel of a shooter game and so on than in 3D.

I've developed for the iphone. I've 2 apps on the app store (under a company I was working for).
The iphone uses Objective C for its programming and it also uses Open GL es for 2D graphics (which is better then core animation which is like default for objective C).

You need a mac of course with xCode and it has a great simulator to test things out.

As for other kits, Unity is great.

You can't develop on the PC right now.

2-D games or 3-D the device has certin limits which you can read about.

I would suggest you build your game before you pay for anything with Apple.

Oh and in the future, flash will have the ability to export files as .ipa which is iphone apps. I believe CS5 when released will have it.

darkerarceus said:

Um well..
1. Java or C++
2.The Apple SDK (Maybe)
3.Yes you can
4.You can't get the feel of a shooter game and so on than in 3D.

Click to expand...

3)Yes you can dual boot. Sorry forgot about that. ($400 to buy the Leopard OS Disk :P)

Where do you get your prices from? 400 dollars?
Snow Leopard (the latest version) is only 30 dollars lol.

Neo-Dragon said:

Where do you get your prices from? 400 dollars?
Snow Leopard (the latest version) is only 30 dollars lol.

Click to expand...

Yeah to upgrade from Leopard

Yeah, I was thinking $400?!? I thought it was $30.

Anyways... Can you develop apps for the iPod Touch?

Yeah, I guess it was $30.

Hmm...I may go and pick up muh copy now, and dual boot it on my windows 7!

Garageband here I come! :P

Ha, good luck. Pretty hard to port Mac OS onto a x86 PC. It's easier the other way around (plus, apple gives you the windows drivers in bootcamp).
Anyways, yeah any app developed for the iphone OS works on the Touch unless it's using the GSM/3G signal.

I only have a pc so it looks like I'm goigmng to have to try snow leopard. I have little programming experience so what language should I start with? I read that Objective C is hard because of the fact that one byte out of place can screw the project up. Should I start with java?

You have to use Objective C- and no, it's really easy. It's an object orientated language.
Actually, I would use the term "really easy" but it's not really hard so.

Also, as I said, unless your using Unity or something, Objective C and Open GL are the ONLY programming languages you can use. <For now>

Also torque has an iphone game building solution. Which uses torquscript I think, but i'm not interested in the iphone... Some1 also made a SDK that works with itorque to make games even easier.

*joins the discussion*
I come bearing useful information. Although Apple's SDK doesn't work on Windows, Adobe's new Flash CS5 has new functions that makes it pretty much an SDK for the non-macs. My lack of posts means that I can't link you to more information, but my good friend Google will help you out. ;)

Neo-Dragon said:

Oh and in the future, flash will have the ability to export files as .ipa which is iphone apps. I believe CS5 when released will have it.

Click to expand...

No. Way. Finally a way to develop iDevice apps on the PC ^_^.

Yeah because Apple won't let Flash 10.1 run through Safari on the iPhone.
This runs on Android 2.1 and Palm's WebOS 1.4 so Adobe said "We'll do it our way so".
they added a funny message if your trying to access flash on iphone's safari and announced that with the Flash builder that will come with Creative Suite 5 will have the ability to export your normal .swf (flash file) into a .ipa (iphone OS file).

Shame they cancelled the public beta. I would have loved to try this out.

Cool, but if you want to add fancy features like using the iPhone's accelerometer or something which a Mac can't emulate on the iPhone simulator, you'll need to pay for a license which allows you to use you iPhone to test the games.

Well, I haven't developed apps on the iPhone, but I have made some 3d models on 1 app and a couple of sprites for a weird app which is about docking a spacial ship.
I would LOVE to develop apps on Flash CS5 for iPhone. Indeed, my very boss got an authorization of testing Flash CS5 from Adobe for some guys(the programmer ones), but I didn't test it!! I was a little shy to ask for a little usage. *sigh*

Fraot said:

Cool, but if you want to add fancy features like using the iPhone's accelerometer or something which a Mac can't emulate on the iPhone simulator, you'll need to pay for a license which allows you to use you iPhone to test the games.

Click to expand...

You can always...get around that... How do you think people develop for the jailbreak community ;)

Because they can build the app on their jailbroken iPhone ha.

That is true, if you wish to test out the accelerometer you need to be able to build your project on a device rather then the simulator.