Selecting and Dragging tiles - ios

Question

I am trying to make a game that involves clicking and dragging tiles to create a path, similar to the popular game Flow Free.
I want to be able to select a tile and slide my finger all in one swipe, however I am having some issues.
I have tried using SwipeGestures, in that
// listen for swipes to the left
UISwipeGestureRecognizer * swipeLeft= [[UISwipeGestureRecognizer alloc]initWithTarget:self action:#selector(swipeLeft)];
swipeLeft.direction = UISwipeGestureRecognizerDirectionLeft;
[[[CCDirector sharedDirector] view] addGestureRecognizer:swipeLeft];
// listen for swipes to the right
UISwipeGestureRecognizer * swipeRight= [[UISwipeGestureRecognizer alloc]initWithTarget:self action:#selector(swipeRight)];
swipeRight.direction = UISwipeGestureRecognizerDirectionRight;
[[[CCDirector sharedDirector] view] addGestureRecognizer:swipeRight];
// listen for swipes up
UISwipeGestureRecognizer * swipeUp= [[UISwipeGestureRecognizer alloc]initWithTarget:self action:#selector(swipeUp)];
swipeUp.direction = UISwipeGestureRecognizerDirectionUp;
[[[CCDirector sharedDirector] view] addGestureRecognizer:swipeUp];
// listen for swipes down
UISwipeGestureRecognizer * swipeDown= [[UISwipeGestureRecognizer alloc]initWithTarget:self action:#selector(swipeDown)];
swipeDown.direction = UISwipeGestureRecognizerDirectionDown;
[[[CCDirector sharedDirector] view] addGestureRecognizer:swipeDown];
My problem is that SwipeGestures only recognize one swipe per screen press -- If I change directions, mid swipe, it does not register.
Assuming that I will need to use UIGestureRecognizers, is it possible for me to use a PanGestureRecognizer along with a SwipeGestureRecognizer to continually check for changes in directions of swipes?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You are correct in your assessment: UISwipeGestureRecognizer is not really useful for this because it only recognizes once the swipe has finished.
What you want is to track the item while the swipe is occurring, you'd use a UIPanGestureRecognizer and track each movement.
To track which direction, you can do something similar to this:
- (void)onPan:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *pan) {
CGPoint translation = [pan translationInView:[pan view]];
if (translation.x > 0) {
// moving right...
}
// important to "eat" the translation if you've handled the
// UI changes, otherwise the translation will keep accumulating
// across multiple calls to this method
[pan setTranslation:CGPointZero inView:[pan view]];
}
Hope this helps.