Mobile Game Design Essentials

A useful and detailed resource for designing games for mobile devices

Overview

• Packed with the best practices in game development, and the methodologies and tricks to create fun, polished games
• Detailed descriptions of software and methodologies to create graphics and audio for video games
• References to the most popular programming and scripting languages and development kits

In Detail

The videogame industry is not affected by the economic crisis as the market expands each year. In addition to that, the mobile market offers the opportunity to small teams with limited budgets to create successful games that can compete with the big companies. This is a guide to help you take a share of this huge market.

Mobile Game Design Essentials will teach you how to develop professional quality games for mobile platforms. You will learn how to take advantage of devices and their built-in technologies. Get to know the best software and programming languages to create videogames from scratch and detailed tutorials to get your hands dirty with the common practices of game development.

Mobile Game Design Essentials introduces you to smartphones, their operating systems, and development environments. It describes in detail the roles required by an indie team of mobile developers, the most popular software to create graphics and audio for games, the most used programming languages, and the best game engines. It also provides several tutorials detailing efficient game development and prototyping.

Starting with a description of the mobile platforms and the roles to cover when building up your own indie team, Mobile Game Design Essentials then provides a description of the techniques and software used to create graphics and audio for games and the coding languages and development environments used by programmers. It also aims to acquaint you with the best practices of mobile game design and development, by addressing the importance of the prototype-test-polish cycle and the analysis of the distinctive aspects of mobile game design. Finally, it concludes with a step-by-step guide to create the presentation document for your next mobile game.

Mobile Game Design Essentials covers everything you need to know to get started in the mobile game industry; from collecting your team, recommendations on development software, to marketing and publication.

What you will learn from this book

• Get to know who makes up a game development team and how to select the right people for yours
• Discover the most popular graphics software applications as well as understand the guidelines to produce graphics efficiently
• Explore the most popular audio software applications and how to produce sound effects and music for your games
• Get well versed with the programming languages used in mobile game development
• Learn what the most common input systems and controls used in mobile games are
• Understand what the most popular game engines used in mobile game development are and which are appropriate to your game’s characteristics
• Get acquainted with the game development process from concept to release
• Learn how to publish and market your mobile game

Approach

A step-by-step guide with plenty of reference images, examples, and tutorials to help you develop a game right from its conceptualization through to its release in the market.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Operating Systems – Mobile and Otherwise
Chapter 2: The Mobile Indie Team
Chapter 3: Graphics for Mobile
Chapter 4: Audio for Mobile
Chapter 5: Coding Games
Chapter 6: Mobile Game Controls
Chapter 7: Interface Design for Mobile Games
Chapter 8: Mobile Game Engines
Chapter 9: Prototyping
Chapter 10: Balancing, Tuning, and Polishing Mobile Games
Chapter 11: Mobile Game Design
Chapter 12: Pitching a Mobile Game