Learning to make apps with Gideros

You want to be a developer, and jump onto the Mobile App bandwagon. However, C, Java, Objective-C, C# are what makes you uncomfortable. Or you might be a web developer and want to utilize your web experience in HTML and javascript. At the end of it you are still unsatisfied as making native apps is not easy. Either too tough with low level languages or apps that are web wrappers around websites. If you came across Lua and were wanting a little help on choosing which framework to choose, you might have gotten help from my book "Learn Lua for iOS Game Development" and if you decided on a framework called Gideros, it gave you a head start.
In case you wanted to delve deeper and learn some advanced tips on how to make an app using Lua and Gideros, you were stuck for options, even though my book provided a good start, it did not cover Gideros in further detail. Now from Arturs Sosins via Packt comes the book Gideros Mobile Game Development.

The book is a small book, i.e 150 odd pages as compared to other 300-400+ pages books. Still it is packed with a lot of information. The Author has an app called Mashballs and the book takes a clone of this app as a baseline and helps the reader understand various aspects like creating scenes, fx, animations, music, levels, etc.

Each reader has a different expectation from a book, some who like me would like to have a book for reference at all times that I can access offline as Googling can get distracting at times. So, if what you are after is a sample app with commentry from start to finish, then this is the book for you. If you are after wanting to know about creating a game with Gideros, then this is the book for you. It is written in an easy to understand language and has a good blend of code and explanation for good understanding.

More details can be found at http://www.packtpub.com/gideros-mobile-game-development/book

Note: The publishers (packt) have provided this e-book Free of cost for reviewing.

Comments

  1. The information written in the article is descriptive and well written.It is also simple to read and understand.Good Read.

    Native Apps Development

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  2. Not for a beginner. Have this book but stuck on with Box2D concept. No clear explanation about for instance: What a body, fixture..

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  3. Hi Anonymous, I am not the Author of the book nor Gideros, however the following is from personal experience.
    1. The skills and interests vary from Developer to Developer.
    2. Many 3rd Party tools/add-ins are not as easy as expected, but their integration make things easier than using it natively.
    3. If you are commparing it to a particular framework, there will be issues. This is mainly due to the way it is implemented.

    I know the author of this book and have interacted with him on several occasions (via email), he is also one of the devs that is working on the on-going development of Gideros.

    There are plenty of articles on the Web on starting to learn Box2D and the principles. I agree with you that in many instances, the books/articles need to address the most basic of things to have a solid foundation and understanding. The funny thing is that 99.99% of people do not have the patience to go through basics, they want to jump straight onto solving what they want.

    Reach out to the Author, he might be able to help you get answers to some of your questions. I could have had some articles on the http://howto.oz-apps.com website, but currently there are a couple of other projects, books that I am busy with.

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