Tiled .tmx Image rendering with SpriteKit and Swift - ios

I have created a tiled .tmx file to create an orthogonal maze type game (my first attempt at writing a game). Is there a customary way to render images in iOS using SpriteKit?
There doesn't seem to be much written about this with regards to Swift. Some pointers in the right direction is all I need.

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Blender + SceneKit (how-to)

A few questions to game developers. I am very beginner in this. I want to create a game level for example a green plane with trees. I have played a little in Blender and SceneKit. I know that I can export .dae from Blender and import it to Xcode. My questions:
Should I delete camera and light node before export? Why?
Should I design all level in one .dea file or make it separately? For example one .dea for plane and four different trees in for .dea's How to merge them in Xcode?
Can I use many times one .dea to generate for example a forest? How?
If creating design in separately is better way how to keep proportions between them to protect yourself from creation man bigger than tree?
I will be very great full if somebody someone dedicates to these questions. It will cut my time to learn basic. Thanks in advance. :)
I'll tell you how I do it:
1) .dea files use only for models(trees, charecters, building, etc...)
2) Game scene: floor, models, light, camera, obstacles build using Xcode scene builder or by code or mixed (based on the scene).
3) Based on size of world/level it can be split into several scenes(visible/invisible by player). Then you can create one blank scene and load/unload these scenes during runtime.
4) For a model you create a reference and after that build forest using reference of tree. If in the future you need to change the color of tree, all trees in all scenes will be updated.
5) For each model(SCNNode) (loaded from .dea file) you can set scale attribute (from code or by Xcode scene builder)
Also, 3D Apple Games by Tutorials is very good for starting.

Terrain Generation using SceneKit

I am trying to make a terrain map for a 3D game in SceneKit. I have tried a few options starting with using a MapKit as the floor but it didn't workout very well. I am not sure what is the proper way of doing the same. I have seen a few search results that talk about procedural generation but none with SceneKit.
I am reaching out to you guys to point me in the right direction. I need to know how to start a project to render a randomly generated terrain. What kinda components should I have in my Scene to do this ? I am not after fully functional code but some established ideas on how this is done normally. I also would like to know what kinda resources I need to generate a map like that. For 2D I can use TileMaps which has tile images put together randomly but how is it done in SceneKit ?

How to draw lines on the screen for an iOS game

I am working on a game where I need to draw a bunch of lines to create a wireframe sort of object, I can do this in sprite kit using nodes but adding a bunch of nodes to the screen will drop the frame rate down a lot. I don't know how to use OpenGL Es at all so that's not an option for me. Is there anything that would just allow me to draw lines on the screen in Sprite kit without adding nodes or is there another framework that will allow me to do that?
If you want a 3D wireframe then your choices are sprite kit (which is built on top of OpenGL), OpenGL, or Metal. Or I guess you could use somebody's 3rd party framework that is also built on top of OpenGL or Metal.
I tend to agree with nhgrif's comment that you're "I don't know xyz so I can't do that" is needlessly limiting. If you can't do anything that involves learning new APIs then you're never going to get very far as a developer.

How to animate sprite with fluent animation (change in form) in swift?

I'm trying to work on the graphical aspect of a game I'm designing in Xcode using sprite kit, and I was wondering if anyone knows how the main character sprites in games like Leo's Fortune and Badland are animated when touched (they fluff up and morph very fluently). How could this be accomplished and what compatible file type could execute this fluent animation? Is .flv compatible with Xcode? I would rather not change the texture in a keyframe sort of way with a .png because that would require a lot of textures at a high texture switching rate.
Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated
Thanks

Cocos2d: graphics tool

I started to learn Cocos2d to develop games and also Box2d; I read some tutorials and I seen that are used two couples of tool "LevelHelper-SpriteHelper" & "PhysicsEditor-TexturePacker".
I noticed that LevelHelper-SpriteHelper are more "simply" and organize levels and physics objects very well.
While with PhysicsEditor-TexturePacker I noticed some difficulties where the approach is not very clear.
So what are the best tools between "LevelHelper-SpriteHelper" & "PhysicsEditor-TexturePacker"?
And what are the differences? Can you explain me? thanks
This should answer your questions: http://abitofcode.com/2012/07/cocos2d-useful-tools/
Physics editor is a program that you use to create a tracing around a sprite that isn't a simple polygon. For example it could trace an image of a car, so that when you went to detect a collision between your car and another object with a physics engine (something like box2d) it registers a collision just with the car and not a square surrounding the car. Here is a picture that shows you what it does: http://www.codeandweb.com/physicseditor/features.
Texture-packer is used to put all your sprites that you use in your game into one spritesheet. This allows you to minimize the amount of memory that all of your sprites take up.
http://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker That picture shows you what it does. Instead of having to add all your individual sprite images to your game you put them all on a spritesheet, which trims the space around each image and puts it into a file size that cocos2d and the iphone can work with.
This is helpful because cocos2d only takes images that have dimensions to the power of two. (2,4,8,16....) If you had a sprite that was 50x50, it would actually take up 64x64 amount of space in your game.
Here is a tutorial that explains most of that better than i did: http://www.raywenderlich.com/2361/how-to-create-and-optimize-sprite-sheets-in-cocos2d-with-texture-packer-and-pixel-formats
And here is project where both are used: http://www.raywenderlich.com/7261/monkey-jump
And here is one with levelhelper and spritehelper: http://www.raywenderlich.com/6929/how-to-make-a-game-like-jetpack-joyride-using-levelhelper-spritehelper-part-1
For a list of more tools go here"
http://www.learn-cocos2d.com/2011/06/complete-list-cocos2d-tools/
SpriteHelper is essentially the same tool as TexturePacker. Both create a single large texture from individual images.
LevelHelper is an editing tool to design your game visually. It also allows editing of the physics world.
PhysicsEditor is a tool to create the (collision) shapes of physics bodies from images. No more, no less.

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