Next year is my senior year and so far I am going to attempt to learn how to develop, make a game, and get it accepted on the app store as my senior project. The problem? I know nothing about programming. I picked this project because I am considering a computer science major and I want to see if this is right for me. So far I've picked out two beginning programming books: Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK - Dave Mark iPhone SDK Development (The Pragmatic Programmers) - Bill Dudney Are there any books or resources that anybody would recommend over these two? As this would be a 2d game, what engines are recommended, if a custom engine is recommended, how difficult is building one considered to making the app itself? Also, what should I do about artwork? Should I try to hand-draw iteek, find somebody local, or somebody on one of these forums. As this would be a paid app what is recommended: money up front, certain %, or certain % up to... Thanks for any and all help everybody.
"Learn C on the Mac" (yes you will need a Mac. Without a Mac you can't submit your products because you have to sign them in XCode or something lik that) "Learn Objective-C on the Mac" About art... How much art will you need? What style are you looking for? These things are pretty important
I guess you have few options. Either learn and develop in Obj C ( as I did for my upcoming game, see signature ) or use one of available game engines. If you are planning to develop a lot on Mac and iPhone, knowing Obj C is a big plus. Of course you can skip it all together and use something like Unity. In this case you don't need to know Obj C, but either Java scripting or C#. Also I read about new engine called Game Salad, where you don't need to do much programming at all I think? Whatever you do, do it in small steps and don't try to make next big thing - a lot of newbies fall into this trap, get burned and never come back.
For a 2d game you should look at cocos2d http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/ - it is free and open source. It was used for Stick Wars, Moonlights, Audio Puzzle, Blockoban, geoSpark, iYamato, Occuro!, Lego Photo and Urban Rivals as well as hundreds more games in the App Store.
@Vingdoloras: Yeah, I already have a macbook that I bought over the summer because I wanted to try OS X and developing. @eJayStudios: I was going to try gamesalad until I decided to do this as my senior project, I don't think I would get as good of a grade for being able to move some stuff around without any programming.
I only know basic object oriented programming and have found Unity to be very friendly - unfortunately their iPhone version isn't free. I was working with other students and recent grads on Tipoli, and we settled on doing everything for a % of final sales. I've heard this is exceptionally rare "in the real world" though, despite it being the only thing I've ever known. If you have other people looking for final/senior projects, you might be able to work out doing it for credit through an independent study? I've done that before, too.
