I haven't written a computer game since my computer studies 'O' level project, which I wrote in 6502 assembler on the BBC micro. Computer studies was a fairly new subject in school, in fact I think we were one of the first few years that actually did it, certainly at our school, and I think it's fair to say our computer studies teacher was less computer expert and more woodwork teacher who drew the short straw and had to quickly study and deliver some classes. So I decided to do something quite unusual for a man and sought some help rather than diving straight in.
I downloaded a book "Swift 3 Game Development" by Stephen Hanley (link below). The book takes you through writing a game, end to end, with all the listings of the code required. It took me right back to typing in endless lines of code from magazines back in the 80's which looking back was a big factor in my learning how to write code in the first place, so it seems like a reasonable approach. I'd recommend the book for anyone who fancies giving game development a go but it's not going to teach you the art of coding fundamentals so if you're a complete novice you may want to try a different option and to be fair it does say that. Also, It doesn't really go into the nuances of the Swift language, like forced unwrapping and optional binding, so if you've got a really curious mind and want to understand more you'll need another Swift reference book.
Anyway I quickly worked my way through the book though I never actually finished "Pierre Penguin Escapes the Antarctic" as I started changing stuff halfway through, but I got enough out of it to inspire confidence that I could write a game of my own, so armed with an understanding of basic iOS game development and a growing fondness for all things Swift I set about writing "Hairball Henry"
Labels: ambition, BBC Micro, bucket list, composition, computer, cycling, game development, iOS, Swift