Tampa iOS Meetup, Tuesday, January 19th: Get started with making iOS games with Sprite Kit!

Happy new year, experienced and aspiring iOS developers in the Tampa Bay area!

If you’ve made a new year’s resolution to take up iOS, Swift, or game development in 2016, the upcoming Tampa iOS Meetup topic might be just what you need to get started. It’s called Get Your Game On: Getting Started with Sprite Kit, and it’s taking place in Tampa next Tuesday, January 19, 2016.

Tampa iOS Meetup is a monthly meetup run by local mobile developer/designer Angela Don and Yours Truly. While Tampa has a couple of great iOS developer meetups — Craig Clayton’s Suncoast iOS and Chris Woodard’s Tampa Bay Cocoaheads, we figured that there was room for a third iOS meetup in the Tampa Bay area, and especially one that would stray into other areas of mobile development. So we made one.

Tampa iOS Meetup’s next meetup: Get Your Game On!

“Games” is the most popular category in the iOS App Store, accounting for 22.5% of active apps. They’re more than twice as popular as the next-most-popular category, business apps. Look in any place where people are waiting these days — in line at the bank or grocery, at public transit stops and airports, cafes and restaurants — and you’ll see people passing the time with a mobile game. Gaming is a basic human activity — we’ve had them since our earliest days, and we’ve had computer games for almost as long as we’ve had computers.

Despite the fact that games are the most-used type of mobile app, there are far fewer game development tutorials than there are for “standard” apps. That’s a pity, because one of the best ways to learn programming is satisfaction, and there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a game you created in action. While games can be complex, the concepts behind them are simple, and some of the most popular games are pretty simple as well. Why not try game development as a way to learn programming, Swift, and iOS?

Join us next Tuesday, January 19th at the Tampa iOS Meetup and start the new year by getting your game on!

The Details

• What: Tampa iOS’ Meetup’s “Get Your Game On” session. Please sign up on our Meetup page so we can plan accordingly!
• When: Tuesday, January 19, 2016, 6:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. We’ll have some snacks at 6:30, with the presentation beginning at 7:00.
• Where: Energy Sense Finance, 3825 Henderson Boulevard (just west of Dale Mabry), Suite 300. See the map below.
  
• What to bring: Yourself, but if you’d like to follow along, bring your Macbook and make sure it’s got Xcode 7.2.
• What to read in advance: If you’re one of those people who likes to do some readings ahead of a presentation, check out the Sprite Kit tutorials on Ray Wenderlich’s site. We’ll be using our own tutorial material, but Ray’s stuff will come in handy.