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Amazingly Useful Stuff

There's tons of stuff iPhone developers need... and it's scattered all over. Here is a constantly updated collection of those things. Know of something missing, just register for an account and you can edit this wiki too!

Learning

• Lean Objective-C
  Most concise Objective-c for programmers guide.
• iPhone Examples
  This site is meant for the relatively new iPhone Developer who just wants simple examples to common tasks.
• OpenGL ES for iPhone: A Simple Tutorial
  A good introducton to OpenGL ES on the iPhone.
• OpenGL ES from the Ground Up Tutorial
  Another OpenGL ES tutorial for the beginner.
• iPhone Game Programming
  First of a many-part lengthy iPhone game making tutorial... all on video.
• Cocoa Memory Rules
  This you cannot skip. You have to know the memory management rules/conventions to work with the iPhone SDK. It's not hard, but critical. The compiler won't save you (though the Static Analyzer can help).
• IRC: #iphonedev
  If you got questions, somebody has answers.

Reference

• OpenGL ES 1.1 Reference
  OpenGL ES 1.1 official reference
• OpenGL ES 2.0 Reference
  OpenGL ES 2.0 official reference

Game Engines

Game engines give you a running start at your next big app. Remember, the less code you have the write the more time you can spend focusing on your design and gameplay.

There are two varieties. Those that give you a code base to start working with and those that give you a full WYSIWYG IDE. There are also those that focus on 2D and those that focus on 3D. Quite often a 3D engine can also be used for 2D (as is the case with Unity3D).

Of these engines, some are open-source and some are commercial. Some commercial engines have a less expensive Indie license for small shops.

• cocos2d Iphone
  A high quality, open source 2D ObjC framework for OpenGL graphics, audio, physics, leaderboards, etc.
• Unity3D
  A sophisticated 3D (and 2D) iPhone game development tool. Not free, but very powerful.
• Shiva
  Another commercial 3D game develop tool that can create iPhone games.
• GameSalad
  A commercial tool for creating 2D games (and iPhone games) without any programming (a powerful visual form-based metaphor is used)
• Torque 2D for iPhone
  Uses the popular WYSIWYG Toque Game Builder to create iPhone 2D games.
• Torque 3D for iPhone
  Uses the popular WYSIWYG Toque Game Builder to create iPhone 3D games.
• Oolong Game Engine
  Open Source C++/ObjC game engine.
• SIO2 Free Open Source 3D Game Engine for iPhone and iPod Touch
  Much-too-long-winded-named open source engine for iPhone game dev built around Blender.
• Bork3D Game Engine
  Commercial C++ 3D Game Engine built around the rude engine.
• Game Haxe
  Mixture of the Haxe and SDL (experimental, but looks promising!)
• Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)
  Commercial (for iPhone), but well-regarded layer for graphics, etc.
• GLBasic
  Make your game in Basic! This is a Windows tool (Parallels, Boot Camp... yada yada), but lets you make iPhone OpenGL games in basic.
• Corona
  Create iPhone Apps (and OpenGL games) using Lua with a very Flash-like SDK framework. A new tool from former developers of Flash.
• Flash Professional CS5
  The next version of Flash (CS5) will do iPhone Apps. This product is not released yet, but you can still track its progress.
• PhoneGap
  A cross-platform framework for crating iPhone/Android/Blackberry Apps using HTML and JavaScript.
• Irrlicht Engine
  A popular open-source C++ 3D game engine, which (it seems) may work on the iPhone.
• Appcelerator Titanium
  A cross-platform (iPhone/iPad/Android) system for developing apps using JavaScript/Ruby/Python/etc.

Networking

• ASIHTTPRequest
  Easy to use CFNetwork API wrapper that makes it easy to perform basic HTTP/REST/AS3 queries and more.
• SmartFoxServer (iPhone API)
  Well regarded multiuser server tech (commercial), popular for Flash-based games, now has iPhone API too. Think MMOG.

Physics

• Chipmunk Physics Engine
  Free 2D physics system (Also pre-integrated in Cocos2d iPhone)
• Box2D Physics Engine
  Free 2D rigid body physics system (Also pre-integrated in Cocos2d iPhone)
• Bullet Physics
  Open Source, (ZLib License) cross-platform (iPhone too of course) 2D/3D Physics engine
• PhysX
  Technically PhysX can work on the iPhone (see Unity3D), but doesn't seem to have official support yet.

Utility

• ZipArchive
  ObjC classes for zip/unzip
• MYCrypto
  High-Level cryptography API for iPhone. ObjC wrapper around Keychain and CSSM APIs. (As of 0.4 has issues on iPhone device)
• TouchJSON
  A parser/generator for JSON in ObjC.
• SwapKit
  Tech that lets apps discover and communicate with each other (100% App Store friendly)
• Fonix iSpeak
  Add voice recognition to your iPhone app!

Cool, Useful Code Thingies

• Zynga FontLabel
  Draw any TTF Font (UIKit) on the iPhone (courtesy of Zynga Games)
• CHDataStructures
  Wish Cocoa had more advanced data structures like a SortedSet or a Queue, then look no further!
• iphone-glu
  iPhone implementation of OpenGL Utility Library (matrix manipulation, polygon tessellation)

Online Community

• OpenFeint
  Leaderboards, achievements, forums, friends, chat, challenges, cross-promotion, twitter/Facebook, cloud storage, geolocation, developer update tickles.
• Agon
  Leaderboards, Awards, friends, cross promotion, twitter/Facebook.
• Plus+
  Leaderboards, awards, challenges, twitter/Facebook.
• ScoreLoop
  Yet Another leaderboard, challenge, cross-promotion, twitter/Facebook thingy. This one is cross-platform (Android & iPhone).
• Tutoral: Create An Online Leaderboard
  A little PHP and you can spin your own leaderboards.

In App Purchase and Notification Services

• Urban Airship
  Push Notification service and In App Purchase API.
• iLime
  Push Notification and In App Purchase (coming soon) infrastructure service.

App Tracking

• AppFigures
  Full featured, web-based app sales and rankings tracking and reporting.
• AppViz
  Full featured Mac application to track sales and rankings.
• Majicrank
  Mac application to track App rankings.
• AppSales-Mobile
  Open-Source iPhone App for tracking sales reports

• pinch analytics
  Dynamic near real-time sales and demographic tracking.
• Flurry
  Dynamic near real-time sales and demographic tracking.

Note: Pinch Media and Flurry have recently merged.

Development Tools

• iSimulate
  Adds multi-touch, accelerometer and more to iPhone Simulator.
• nib2objc
  Tool that converts your UIKit NIB or XIB to Objective C code that does the same thing.
• SpeedLimit
  Network bandwidth limiter for testing iphone apps. Handy for testing your iPhone app under normal Edge network conditions in the iPhone Simulator.
• SimFinger
  Cool utility to change the look of the pointer in the simulator (and add a sheen to the iPhone screen) for better video captures.
• ScreenFlow
  Good screencast recording for the Mac for capturing Simulator runs of your app. You can change the pointer to something more useful too.

Useful Development Tips and Tricks

• Useful NSLog() Techniques
  Learn about some GCC macros to help NSLog do what you want and how to block NSLogs easily in your distribution builds.
• Multiple Targets (how to add a "lite" version)
  Learn how to create multiple target for XCode iPhone Projects, perfect for when it's time for the "lite" version.

Resources

• Glyphish
  Great source for iPhone icon art

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