I recently had the pleasure of attending Cocoaconf Atlanta, where I attended an excellent 2D gaming workshop given by Josh Smith. The workshop featured Apple’s SpriteKit (SK), which was released two years ago and is a very powerful 2D gaming framework that also includes a great, easy to use, physics engine.
In this post I’ll cover some major features of SK’s sprite rendering and physics engine by implementing a small iOS game!
Game Dev
Open Source iOS SpriteKit Library With UI Creation Helpers And More
Here’s another nice library for working with SpriteKit providing a number of useful of SpriteKit helpers called HLSpritekit from Hilogames that is especially useful for those looking to create an interface within their SpriteKit scenes.
Some of the features of HLSpriteKit include:
- Loading of scene assets in the background
- Easier gesture handling
- Organization of content into a grid format
- A Toolbar node
- A button node
- A layout manager for table-style layouts
- Modal presentation of nodes
Creating Metal Textures and Samplers
Warren Moore on Metal Textures and Samplers:
In this post, we’ll talk about texture mapping, which helps us bring virtual characters to life. We’ll also introduce samplers, which give us powerful control over how texture data is interpreted while drawing. Along the way, we will be assisted by a cartoon cow named Spot.
Beginning Scene Kit Tutorial
Learn how to easily create 3D scenes in your iOS apps or games in this Scene Kit tutorial!
In this Scene Kit tutorial, you’ll learn how to build a simple Scene Kit app by developing a 3D Carbon Visualizer.
3D visualization is a great option for explaining complex concepts – like chemical compounds, in this case – in a fun, playful, and easily digestible format. Words and diagrams are essential, but Scene Kit can definitely elevate your work to a new level!
Sprite Kit and Inverse Kinematics with Swift
Learn how to create a ninja-punching game with inverse kinematics with Sprite Kit and Swift!
How to Make a Waiting Game Like Farmville with Sprite Kit and Swift
Learn how to make a waiting game like Farmville using Swift in this Sprite Kit tutorial!
Example: Source Code Release To Popular iOS RTS Game Warfare Incorporated
Here’s an iOS source code release to the fantastic Warfare Incorporated RTS game called Hostile Takeover from Spiffcode.
As the readme states:
Hostile Takeover is the open source release of the wildly popular mobile Real Time Strategy game Warfare Incorporated. Warfare Incorporated’s developers, grateful for all the contributions of the open source community, are delighted to give something back.
Card Game Mechanics in Sprite Kit with Swift
Learn how to add card game mechanics into your Sprite Kit games using Swift!
In this tutorial, you’ll use Sprite Kit to manipulate images that serve as cards in a CCG app. You’ll move cards on the screen, animate them to show which cards are active, flip them over and enlarge them so you can read the text — or just admire the artwork.
How to Create a Game Like Cut the Rope Using Sprite Kit
Learn how to make a game similar to Cut the Rope using all the goodness that is provided by Sprite Kit.
Make a Game Like Candy Crush – Swift Tutorial
Learn how to make a game like Candy Crush for your iPhone in this 2-part tutorial series – and get a great Swift tutorial along the way!
In this Swift tutorial, you’ll learn how to make a game like Candy Crush named Cookie Crunch Adventure. Yum, that sounds even better than candy!
In the process of going through this tutorial, you’ll get some excellent practice with Swift techniques such as enums, generics, subscripting, closures, and extensions. You’ll also learn a lot about game architecture and best practices.