I am making a spriteKit based game and wonder if I can make the SKScene fixed width (to make it easier to layout the sprites), and let it resize to the actual screen width while keeping the aspect ratio. Is it possible to achieve this goal and is it recommended (will sprites not be rendered clearly due to resizing)?
Giving the scene a fixed size is actually what we want to do in SpriteKit games. SpriteKit will than scale the game for each device using the scaleMode settings (defaults to .aspectFill). Its not a good idea to make the scene the size of the device or use .resizeFill for scale mode as that will lead to massive inconsistencies on different devices. I have been there before with 1 game and it was an absolute nightmare.
So we basically have 2 ways to do it correctly
1) Set scene size to iPad (e.g 1024x768 -landscape, 768x1024 - portrait. This was the default setting in Xcode 7.
You than usually just show some extra background at the top/bottom (landscape) or left/right (portrait) on iPads.
Examples of games that show more on iPads:
Altos Adventure, Leos Fortune, Limbo, The Line Zen, Modern Combat 5.
2) Apple changed the default scene size in xCode 8 to iPhone 6/7 (750*1334-Portait, 1337*750-Landscape). This setting will crop your game on iPads.
Examples of games that show less on iPads:
Lumino City, Robot Unicorn Attack
Choosing between those 2 options is up to you and depends what game you are making. I usually prefer to use option 1 and show more background on iPads.
Regardless of scene size scale mode is usually best left at the default setting of .aspectFill. This way you will have a consistent experience on all devices.
I would not try to do some random hacks where you manually change scene or node sizes/scales on difference devices, you should let xCode/SpriteKit do it for you.
In code you would initialise a SKScene with your preferred size like so
let gameScene = GameScene(size: CGSize(width: 1024, height: 768))
If you use the visual scene editor you set the scene size directly in the inspector panel on the right.
Hope this helps
Any resizing comes with a performance penalty and resizing artifacts such as blurred edges or others.
Scene size is defined by the ViewController when it instantiates the scene before presenting it. Isn't it better to create the scene with the same size as the actual screen size and don't resize it any further?
Related
When creating my game in spriteKit I used the game size 1080x1920. Now however If I am to run it on Ipad it looks bizarre. Is there an easy fix? I am simply worried that my app will get rejected. Thank you in advance?
Its quite a commonly asked question.
What we usually do in SpriteKt is to give the SKScene a fixed size and let SpriteKit do the scaling for you on different devices.
So basically we have 2 ways to do it correctly
1) Set scene size to iPad (e.g 1024x768 -landscape, 768x1024 - portrait). This was the default setting in Xcode 7.
You than usually just have/show some extra background at the top/bottom (landscape) or left/right (portrait) on iPads which gets cropped on iPhones.
Examples of games that show more on iPads / crop on iPhones:
Altos Adventure, Leos Fortune, Limbo, The Line Zen, Modern Combat 5.
2) Apple changed the default scene size in xCode 8 to iPhone 6/7 (750*1334-Portait, 1334*750-Landscape). This setting will crop your game on iPads.
Examples of games that show less on iPads:
Lumino City, Robot Unicorn Attack
Choosing between those 2 options is up to you and depends what game you are making.
Regardless of scene size scale mode is usually best left at .aspectFill or .aspectFit, again depending on what you prefer and need (e.g cropping with aspectFill or black bars with aspectFit)
You would use the Universal asset slot and/or device specific images. This way you will have a consistent experience on all devices
Spritekit scale full game to iPad
How to make SKScene have fixed width?
Hope this helps
When you present the scene's you also set the aspect ratio.
example :
if let scene = SKScene(fileNamed: "GameScene") {
// Set the scale mode to scale to fit the window
scene.scaleMode = .aspectFill
// Present the scene
view.presentScene(scene)
}
There are 4 different aspect radios you can set
aspectFit
aspectFill
fill
resizeFill
You can find out about the 4 different types here in the apple documents.
It looks to me that you currently have it set to aspectFill but you would be better off using aspectFit. This will create a black bar on the top and bottom on some devices but it will keep the aspect ratio the same.
If you want it to look good on all devices(no black bar) you would need to check which device it is running on then update the size and position of your sprites accordingly.
Whenever scenes are hard coded, (not made within the editor) using .resizeFill will ensure that the width AND height of the scene ALWAYS conform to the view. So your game will scale correctly on any device. For scenes that are made within the editor, this is not the case.
Personally, I hardcoded all the levels in my game "Astro Path" (it's on the app store for reference) and used .resizeFill so it would scale correctly on any device without any cropping or black bars. (who wants that stuff yuck) For my title screens, I used:
.aspectFill on iPhone
.fill on iPad
because they were designed within the editor. I checked for the current device using: if UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad { do w/e }
I'm relatively new to swift programming. I have made an app where I didn't use SpriteKit and I would size most views by scaling down the images to a multiple of the screens width and height. Not sure if this is the best tactic, but it worked and I was able to build an app that looked good on all devices.
With spritekit and the scene.sks files, I don't have the option of auto-layouts to size my sprites like I did before. There isn't a lot of content about universal apps online, so I'm struggling to find a solution.
My question is how do I go about sizing objects and making sure my scenes look the same across different devices?
If you have a good example that could explain this that would be very helpful. Thank you!
What we usually do in SpriteKt is to give the SKScene a fixed size and let SpriteKit do the scaling for you on different devices.
So basically we have 2 ways to do it correctly
1) Set scene size to iPad (e.g 1024x768 -landscape, 768x1024 - portrait). This was the default setting in Xcode 7.
You than usually just have/show some extra background at the top/bottom (landscape) or left/right (portrait) on iPads which gets cropped on iPhones.
Examples of games that show more on iPads / crop on iPhones:
Altos Adventure, Leos Fortune, Limbo, The Line Zen, Modern Combat 5.
2) Apple changed the default scene size in xCode 8 to iPhone 6/7 (750*1334-Portait, 1337*750-Landscape). This setting will crop your game on iPads.
Examples of games that show less on iPads:
Lumino City, Robot Unicorn Attack
Choosing between those 2 options is up to you and depends what game you are making. I usually prefer to use option 1 and show more background on iPads.
Regardless of scene size scale mode is usually best left at the default setting of .aspectFill.
You would use the Universal asset slot and/or device specific images. This way you will have a consistent experience on all devices
Spritekit scale full game to iPad
How to make SKScene have fixed width?
Hope this helps
I want to make a landscape app to be universal, so that the sprite nodes scale proportionally to whatever view size is running the app. I'd like an entirely programmatic solution because I don't like the IB.
My game is pretty simple, and I don't need scrolling or zooming of any kind, so the whole game will always be present and take up the entire view.
Is it possible that what I'm looking for is to change the size of the scene to always fit the view? If so, can you explain this thoroughly because I've tried changing this section of my view controller
if let scene = GameScene(fileNamed:"GameScene")
to be the constructor method that takes size as a parameter but Xcode doesn't like that.
Things I've tried
Using fractions of self.view.bounds.width/height. This usually makes all iPhones look good, but on iPads stretches and skews nodes and the boundary box around thew view.
Changing the scaleMode among all four types. I'd like to keep good practice and feel like .AspectFill (default) is the one I should make my app work with, but open to suggestions. Note; I don't want black edges on any device, just the entire view displayed/scaled proportionally.
Applying programmatic constraints. Now I'm fairly new to this and don't understand constraints completely, but no tutorials I've seen even from RayWenderlich talk about constraints on nodes so I didn't delve to deep in this.
Using a method like this to convert points among views. This actually worked pretty well for point positioning of nodes, and if possible I would like this method to work out, but then I still have the problem of sizes of nodes. Also when I build for iPad with this method the view seems to start off as portrait and the nodes look fine but then I have to manually switch it to landscape and the sprites and view boundaries once again get messed up. Here's the method:
func convert(point: CGPoint)->CGPoint {
return self.view!.convertPoint(CGPoint(x: point.x, y:self.view!.frame.height-point.y), toScene:self)
}
Countless vid tutorials on RW and everywhere else on internet.
Thanks in advance! I appreciate the help. I know this topic is weird because a lot of people ask questions about it but everyone's situation seems to be different enough that one solution doesn't fit all.
I initially tried to do the scaling myself with 2 games and it was just madness (scene size = view size or scene scale mode = .ResizeFill). You have to adjust all values e.g font size, sprite sizes, impulses etc for all devices and it will never be consistent.
So you have 2 options basically
1) Set scene size to 1024X768 (landscape) or 768x1024 (portrait). This was the default setting in Xcode 7.
You than usually just have/show some extra background at the top/bottom (landscape) or left/right (portrait) on iPads which gets cropped on iPhones.
Examples of games that show more on iPads / crop on iPhones:
Altos Adventure, Leos Fortune, Limbo, The Line Zen, Modern Combat 5.
2) Apple changed the default scene size in xCode 8 to iPhone 6/7 (7501334-Portait, 1337750-Landscape). This setting will crop your game on iPads.
Examples of games that show less on iPads:
Lumino City, Robot Unicorn Attack
Chosing between the 2 options is up to you and depends what game you are making. I usually prefer to use option 1 and show more background on iPads.
Regardless of scene size scale mode is usually best left at the default setting of .aspectFill.
To adjust specific things such as labels etc you can do it this way
if UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad {
...
}
You can try the scene scaling yourself, create a new SpriteKit sample game project. Run on all iPhones and you will notice the HelloWorld label looks perfect on all devices.
Now change the default settings to scene size = frame or use .ResizeFill, the HelloWorld label is not scaled properly anymore on all devices.
As a side note, the line
if let scene = GameScene(fileNamed: "GameScene")
references the GameScene.sks file. You said you do everything programatically, therefore you can probably delete the GameScene.sks file and change the line to
let skView = view as! SKView!
let scene = GameScene(size: CGSize(width: 1024, height: 768)) // 768 x 1024 if portrait
Update:
I am now using a slightly different variant as I had problems adapting my game to iPhoneX. I set scene size to 1334x750 and use aspect fit as scale mode. I than run some code to remove the black bars if needed e.g. on iPads or iPhone X. It’s based on this great article (link no longer works).
http://endlesswavesoftware.com/blog/spritekit-skscene-scalemode/
For the past couple of weeks I have been dabbling with SpriteKit, Xcode, and Swift and despite doing a lot of research I have yet to find out the best way to manage sprite size between devices.
In my game I have found a somewhat round-about way of handling sprite size and position to make my sprites somewhat consistent between devices by manually adjusting characteristics like size, font size, and position with if statements checking for the height of the device. Ideally I would like my entire game views, including the sprites that they house, to be sized proportionally to the device size. I have tried messing with the different SKSceneScaleModes but nothing is really doing the trick.
My question: What is the most efficient way of handling sprite size and positioning between devices in SpriteKit (more specifically in Swift)? I don't care too much about supporting the iPad, mainly just the iPhone 4s - 6 plus. Thanks.
Imo, simply scaling relative to the GameScene's size is good enough. In GameViewController, I initialize the scene to be the view.bounds.size. When you create your sprite, just make a setScale call to make it proportional to view.bounds.size. Since view.bounds.size is based on how big the screen is, you'll get proportionally bigger images for bigger screened devices.
I have a question regarding universal game assets and absolute positioning of a SKNodes in Sprite Kit (iOS 8+).
I will try to present my problem through an example as follows:
Imagine a 2D top down game with a SKSpriteNode which represents a house. A house has multiple child SKSpriteNodes which represent chairs, desk, sofa, etc.
I have 3 versions of house asset:
1x - 200 x 200px (Non-retina iPads),
2x - 400 x 400px (Retina iPhones and iPads),
3x - 600 x 600px (iPhone 6 Plus).
Important:
Child nodes (chairs, desk, etc.) positions are defined in a .plist file. Something like this (JSON representation):
children: [
{
position = {20,20};
},
...
]
Since the position is defined in points and not in pixels, everything gets positioned like expected according to device screen scale. For 1x devices the position stays {20,20}, for 2x position is {40,40} and for 3x the position is {60,60}.
Problem:
The problem is that 200x200px and 400x400px assets are way to small for iPad devices in order to achieve similar look and feel on all devices.
Question:
How to successfully present/import assets in a way that would enable
me to achieve similar (if not the same) look and feel on all
devices/screen sizes without breaking child nodes positioning?
My takes:
Take 1:
I could simply use the existing 400x400px assets on Non-retina iPad devices and 600x600px assets on Retina iPad devices for the house node but the positioning of a child nodes would become broken. This is because the child position value wouldn't change and would still be {20,20} and {40,40} for iPad devices respectively, while the assets would be bigger. This would yield inaccurate child positions relative to the house node.
Take 2:
I could also scale the SKScene size (zoom effect) while using the normal 200x200px and 400x400px sized assets for iPad devices respectively. This works and it keeps the child nodes positioning working but the rendered quality of the scene/assets is not good as it should be. Also, this feels like a hack and we don't want that.
Take 3:
I could also use twice as big assets for iPad devices and double the child nodes position at the runtime. In this case I would use a 400x400px asset for non-retina iPad devices and a new 800x800px asset for retina iPad devices. While this looks great and keeps the child nodes positioning working, it seems like a really big hack fixing child node position during runtime with this:
if (UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad) {
position.x *= 2.0f;
position.y *= 2.0f;
}
Thank you for taking the time to read the question!
I could simply use the existing 400x400px assets on Non-retina iPad
devices and 600x600px assets on Retina iPad devices for the house node
but the positioning of a child nodes would become broken. This is
because the child position value wouldn't change and would still be
{20,20} and {40,40} for iPad devices respectively, while the assets
would be bigger. This would yield inaccurate child positions relative
to the house node.
You can simply scale your house node (not the scene) to a larger size. All you need to do is set the scale on your house to a value that looks good on larger devices. And in fact, instead of checking for iPad we can come up with a formula that sets the scale depending on the size of the screen. Something like the code below should work. Note that it assumes your house is positioned perfectly on a iPhone 4 and it will consistently scale to all larger screens. Note that you really could pick any arbitrary size as your base case, but choosing the smallest screen and scaling up is easiest. Just be sure to provide larger textures so that the textures don't become blurry when scaled.
[house setScale:self.scene.size.width/320.0];
OR
You could use two nodes. A root node for holding the "actual" position, and then an image node child for displaying the image. This will allow you to separate your positional data from what's being displayed. You could resize and position your child image node however you want without messing with the actual position of the root node. You could even include this extra image node data in your JSON.
I could also scale the SKScene size (zoom effect) while using the
normal 200x200px and 400x400px sized assets for iPad devices
respectively. This works and it keeps the child nodes positioning
working but the rendered quality of the scene/assets is not good as it
should be. Also, this feels like a hack and we don't want that.
This option can definitely work if your App can handle the different aspect ratios in someway. For example you could allow scrolling the scene if the scene is scaled larger than the device screen. The loss in quality occurs because you are scaling the textures larger than their expected size. You need to provide larger textures to keep the quality high when zooming. In this case you could probably just use your 600x600 images (or maybe even larger) and let it scale with zoom. For example, in my RTS Sprite-Kit game for OS X I scale the entire scene so I get the same look across all devices. And I don't lose any quality because I make sure to provide very large textures so there is no loss in quality while scaling.
I could also use twice as big assets for iPad devices and double the
child nodes position at the runtime. In this case I would use a
400x400px asset for non-retina iPad devices and a new 800x800px asset
for retina iPad devices. While this looks great and keeps the child
nodes positioning working, it seems like a really big hack fixing
child node position during runtime with this:
This could also work, especially if your iPad requires custom layout. However, if possible avoid checking specifically for iPad and instead use the screen size to create layout rules so your nodes dynamically adjust on all screen sizes consistently (See the line of code above). Sometimes this is not possible if your iPad layout is very different from the iPhone, in which case you will have no choice but to check for iPad.
All three of these solution are good. I wouldn't consider any one of them "hacky." They all work for different purposes. You need to find the solution that works best for your game.
I would also recommend you see my two answers below. Not sure but they may help you with understanding universal positioning and scaling in Sprite Kit.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/25256339/2158465
https://stackoverflow.com/a/29171224/2158465
Good luck with your game, let me know if you have any questions.
There's no easy way to do what you want. One approach would be to use a fixed screen size on your devices. The iPhone 5 all the way up to iPhone 6+ all use a 16:9 aspect ratio for their screens. Whereas the iPad and iPhones 4s and earlier, all use a 4:3 screen aspect ratio.
Before presenting your GameScene, you can determine the screen's aspect ratio and then set a fixed view size like this for 16:9:
GameScene *startGame = [[GameScene alloc] initWithSize:CGSizeMake(736, 414)];
startGame.scaleMode = SKSceneScaleModeAspectFit;
or this for 4:3
GameScene *startGame = [[GameScene alloc] initWithSize:CGSizeMake(1024, 768)];
startGame.scaleMode = SKSceneScaleModeAspectFit;
The exact values really do not matter, only the ratios.
Knowing the exact screen size will allow you to place objects in more precise manner regardless of iPhone 5 screen or 6+ screen.
Using image assets, you can also specify iPad versions of an image.
However there's not really a way around adding some extra logic to your app, branching depending on whether or not your running on the iPad, and adjusting the position manually.
We could discuss how to best incorporate that though: I'm not a fan of this "if I'm not this device" checks all throughout the code. Create an abstract superclass and two subclasses, each handling layout (or whatever you may want to call it) for one interface idiom. You will the only need to check once (when instantiating these) and polymorphism will take care of the rest.
You can use a software as PaintCode to dynamically generate texture perfectly sized to your need.
All you have to do is to define the frame' dimensions for each of your devices.