John P. Doran - UDK iOS game development beginners guide

John Doran is a 23 year old Technical Game Designer, who has worked on all manners of educational, mod, and professional game projects. He graduated from DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA with a Bachelor of Science in Game Design. John previously worked at LucasArts in San Francisco, CA on Star Wars 1313 as an Intern-Level Designer. He is currently working at DigiPen's campus in Singapore tutoring and assisting students while giving lectures on UDK, Flash, and Actionscript. If you would like to reach him, send him an e-mail at john@johnpdoran.com. Though John occasionally writes papers which he posts on his personal website, this is his first published book.

I would first like to thank both Christos Gatzidis and Joanna Finchen, for giving me the opportunity to write this book. I would also like to thank all of the people at Packt, including Vishal Bodwani and Unnati Shah, for all their support during the writing process, you were all so amazing!

I would also like to thank Daniel Weiss. In addition to being a Technical Reviewer of the book, he helped me when I was just learning Unreal Tournament 3 and kindled my love of Epic's fine game engine without which I wouldn't be here today.

On that same note, I also want to thank Samir Abou Samra and Elie Hosry for their support and encouragement while working on this book, and the rest of the DigiPenSingapore staff including Jocelyn Villanueva, Chris Champagne, and Nicolette Oh, as well as my Singapore friends, Jos Rivero, Matt Hill, and Gabriel Serra.

Last but not least, a big thanks goes to all of my friends, my little brothers and sister, Chris, Joey, and Dymphna Doran, and my girlfriend Hannah Mai for being patient with me, as I spent my free time and weekends away from them as I finished the last few chapters of the book. Finally, my parents, Joseph and Sandra Doran took me seriously, when I told them I wanted to make games.

Dr. Christos Gatzidis is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Technology at Bournemouth University, UK at the School of Design, Engineering, and Computing. He has a Ph.D. from City University London, UK and an M.Sc. in Computer Animation from Teesside University, UK, and has previously published work in a number of academic edited books, conferences, and journals. He is also the framework leader for the Creative Technology collection of degrees at Bournemouth University (which includes the B.Sc. in Games Technology and the M.Sc. in Computer Games Technology courses). Christos teaches a variety of units on these courses and uses Epic's UDK across all years of the undergraduate course, to cover topics ranging from basic level design fundamentals to more advanced scripting.

I would like to thank all friends, colleagues, and family who offered support during the writing of this book and, of course, the great people at Packt (for their guidance and endless patience) plus, last but not least, Epic Games (for the creation of UDK, easily one of the coolest game design tools ever)!

Richard Moore graduated in 2009 studying video games design at Hull School of Art and Design, where he first began expanding his creativity by working as a web designer in Hull, East Yorkshire, and London for 3 years. He worked on a number of different projects with clients from different industry backgrounds, such as a collection of stylish websites, logos, brochures, business cards, web banners, animated graphics, and e-mail marketing campaigns. Through the clouds lies his passion in video game development and the complete creation of 3D art including modeling, texturing, and high resolution rendering. He does game documentation and conceptual drawings as well.

Richard will always take any opportunity to meet as many different people from the game development community as possible and as a result, he has attended the Game Grads career fair, participated in the Game Republic 2009 student showcase in Sheffield and Platform 2010, Hulls 1st Digital and Gaming event where he won the award for best character and a cheque for 100. In March 2011, he was involved in Platform Expo's 2011, Hull's second video game expo, where he entered the video game showcase for the second consecutive year and won second prize for his outstanding contribution to video game design, and is now involved in Platform Expo's 2012 being held at the University of Hull.

In July 2011, he volunteered as a Marketing Assistant/Designer for an online-based video games magazine, where he would assist the Editor-In-Chief in designing templates for latest issues of the magazine, writing reviews on latest video game titles, and talking to clients about potential advertising coverage within the magazine and online. As a result, he is now working as a Games Designer/Developer for Concise Media Design based in London, who create ground-breaking iPad apps, high-impact short films, and bespoke video games. In his spare time, he focuses on more freelance design and development work with up and coming companies, as well as rambling on about video games.

Dan Weiss is currently a programmer working at Psyonix Studios in San Diego, CA. He is a 2010 graduate of DigiPen Institute of Technology, having worked on titles such as Attack of the 50ft Robot! during his time there. Since 2004, he has also been working on the Unreal Engine, producing the mod Unreal Demolition for Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament 3, and is currently working on the iOS title ARC Squadron .

I'd like to thank my parents for believing in my crazy idea of working on videogames for a living; Rachel Rutherford for always being available at all hours of the day when I need some advice; and John Doran for thinking of me when this book started coming together, and always providing me with some laughs about his latest Kismet tricks.