What this book covers

Chapter 1, Operating Systems – Mobile and Otherwise, describes the differences between the most important mobile platforms (iOS, Android, and Windows Phone) and the most popular software which are used to develop games and apps for each one of them.

Chapter 2, The Mobile Indie Team, offers a description of the main roles to be covered in an indie team of mobile game developers, the suggested formation background, and the tasks each one of them is accountable for.

Chapter 3, Graphics for Mobile, offers an explanation of the relevant 2D and 3D graphic formats used for mobile games, the techniques used to create such assets, and the most popular software to create 2D and 3D graphics for mobile games.

Chapter 4, Audio for Mobile, discusses the creation of audio for mobile games, the different audio types used in games, and the most popular software the professionals make use of to create audio for games.

Chapter 5, Coding Games, offers a description of the most popular coding and scripting languages used in game development, their strengths and weaknesses, and the description of the basic structure of a game program.

Chapter 6, Mobile Game Controls, focuses on the characteristics of the touch interface of today's smartphones and the use of built-in sensors and other external devices as input devices to control mobile games.

Chapter 7, Interface Design for Mobile Games, delves into the theory of user interface design and offers a description of popular models and techniques to create user interfaces for games in general and mobile games in particular.

Chapter 8, Mobile Game Engines, is about the most popular game engines used to develop games for mobile, detailing the strengths and weaknesses of each one of them. With this chapter we also begin our tutorial to create a game with Unity 3D from scratch.

Chapter 9, Prototyping, is focused on the techniques and tools used to prototype games, providing a list of useful software to achieve the task. The chapter also contains the second part of the Unity 3D tutorial.

Chapter 10, Balancing, Tuning, and Polishing Mobile Games, offers a description of the actions required to smooth the angles of a game's gameplay and the techniques used to achieve a perfectly balanced gameplay. In this chapter, we also get to the conclusion of the tutorial with Unity 3D.

Chapter 11, Mobile Game Design, explains the design process of a mobile game and delves into the specific difficulties related to designing games for today's smartphones, based on their hardware, the specific fruition models of mobile games, and the characteristics of the mobile market.

Chapter 12, Pitching a Mobile Game, is a practical guide to the creation of the presentation document of an actual mobile game. The document, which contains a description of the most relevant aspects of a mobile game, is essential to explain your projects to potential investors.