Sunday 19 May 2013

Developing Mobile Games with Moai SDK Book Review


This book is a gentle introduction to the basics of building games with the MOAI SDK.  MOAI is used in professional game development because it’s simple, open, cross-platform and powerful.  It takes a lot of the initial legwork out of building a framework, while still being completely open to modification.  This book, however, is not geared towards professionals.  This book is a basic introduction to game development for beginners using the MOAI framework.  If you’re a beginner to game development, either hobbyist or aspiring professional, then this book is a good starting point.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t even consider it, it won’t provide you with any value.


Now, for those beginners who are still reading, I’ll go over what the book contains.  There are several example projects in here that cover different aspects of game development, including HUDs and physics, as well as the absolute basics such as basic gameplay logic, displaying sprites, sound, a simple resource manager, etc.  So, if you’re unfamiliar with any of these topics, then this book may be for you.

Finally, it should be mentioned that this book really focuses on iOS game development.  There isn’t much explanation on how to deploy to other platforms.

All in all, this is a decent book for beginners in game development, but doesn’t provide much value beyond that.  It barely scratches the surface of game development with MOAI.