Whether you’ve tried developing an iOS app before, or, you’re a complete novice who hasn’t dared to explore Mac or Xcode (the IDE used to develop iOS apps), you’ll surely gain a lot here.
As a developer, the first question to strike your mind is “what to build?”. In order to get started quickly and straightaway, we’d go ahead and build an app that’s based on a simple logic and doesn’t require great programming skills! Besides, building a complicated app can be too difficult to begin with, so we are here trying to develop something more simple and easy to work with, say, a puzzle. The puzzle is going to be quite simple — nevertheless, you can increase its complexity as you wish and is entirely dependent on the skill level of the player.
App workflow
We’ll begin by developing a picture puzzle, and the first step would be to disorganise the picture. Once the player successfully rearranges the picture, the app displays a congratulatory message. You can choose between images for the puzzle as well as difficulty levels too! Cool! Isn’t it?
Requisites
The first thing you need to do as a developer, is to envision the game and get to know what it takes to develop the puzzle on your own. Before you can actually start with any coding or even opening your Mac or initiating Xcode, it is imperative that you create a list of requirements and hint out what you would actually need.
For instance:
- The app is going to deal with pictures/images and players get to work on the puzzle mode at the start.
- Figure out what you need to be doing instead of the outcome for now.
- Analyse the approach you intend to take to solve the puzzle.
- Break your app’s behaviour into smaller action points that will let you prioritise your tasks in the course of development. This is one great way of getting things done quickly within a short time.
Probably, you should trying giving a quick glance at the following steps that will help you stay on track of what is happening and what needs to be done.
- You first need a table to present your images in a compact manner and effectively display the puzzle name or number.
- When initiated, the puzzle pops up the game with a begin message on a new screen.
- The background of the puzzle must be broken into pieces depending on the number of tiles and the shape. It entirely depends on your choice as a developer to choose the number of tiles and the shape of them as well. To begin with, you can choose 3, which is simpler.
- Space the tiles with a blank line between them to add impact.
- Once that is done, ensure that you create a blank space for the player to move the tile up and down to get the puzzle complete.
- The directions for moving the tile should be clear and very accurate.
- Once you have done this, shuffle all the tiles and make them random such that it imparts the image of a broken picture and requires arrangement.
- When the puzzle is complete, make sure that the pop up message displays.
This is an example of the simplest form, of an iOS app. Most of you would have better ideas that could very well turn out into great apps! However, it is an important first step for you to break up the app idea into smaller fragments or steps as I’ve illustrated above.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll be ready to proceed further. The next steps would deal with how to actually create a project in Xcode on a Mac computer. Stay tuned for my next update. Till then, feel free to try your hand at Xcode. Believe me, it’s easier than you think it is!
