Cocos2d iOS: How to draw shadows underneath a CCNode - ios

I'm building a simple card game and would like to draw shadows when users pick the cards up. Any quick solutions?
Example:

Quick solution? Draw a black shape (or whatever the shadow color is) on a layer behind your selected card. Just like in your example image you have a fuzzy gray square box behind, but yet slightly down and to the right, of another square that is on a layer on top of it. Or you can draw the shape underneath the card and move the card a little to give the illusion of it rising.

Related

Make view stand out from the surroundings. Border layer with inverse color?

I have a view (a Button in this case) and the content behind/below it can move around (a ScrollView). The button is just plain white with black text and not bordered with anything. When the content behind the View is white it does not really stand out as I would like it to do. (I can fix this with a black border sure... but...)
I have this idea of having a border around the button that is the opposite color of the view (pixel) behind it. So the border would always contrast with the background and constantly change with the content behind it.
I have googled a bit and looked into visual effects layers and some more complicated (over the top of my head) graphics stuff I don't remember the terminology for.
If you have an idea of how to approach this please tell me. I just really want to see what it would look like.
and have a wonderful day!
I don't think you can create a border that uses colors based on the color of the pixel from the layer behind the current layer using CALayer and borders.
What I would suggest doing is to add a second CALayer to your view's CALayer, inset by -1 in both dimensions (made 1 pixel bigger.) Let's call that the surroundLayer. Then make the surroundLayer's borderColor be white and the view's layer.borderColor be black (or visa-versa.) You can make the surroundLayer's borderColor be 50% opaque so it just lightens/darkens the pixels under it without completely obscuring them, and that is enough to increase the contrast and make your view's border show up regardless of the contents under it.
I've used this technique before and it works well.
Edit:
Check out the project https://github.com/DuncanMC/MaskableImageView.git. The project demonstrates using an image as a mask layer to hide/reveal the contents of a view.
The class MaskableView in that project draws a circular "cursor" that shows where it is revealing/masking the contents of its subview (an image and a label, in the example app.) The cursor is yellow in the middle, with a partly transparent black outer circle around it. This gives good contrast regardless of the colors in the part of the image it is being drawn over.
The MaskableView class has properties that let the caller set the colors use for the "cursor" circle.
Below I posted a short animation of what the eraser tool with a yellow inner circle and an outer, 1/2 transparent black circle looks like.
Without the outer dark circle the yellow inner circle tends to get lost in brighter parts of an image. With the combination of a bright colored inner circle and a partly transparent, dark outer circle, it's easy to see on ANY background:

iOS Triangular Image view

so I'm making a game and pretty much when the player (which is a triangular shaped rocket) hits an object flying at you (a rock) the game ends. I have everything working well but my problem is the rocket is a triangle yet the image view its in is a rectangle. So if the edge of the image view touches the rock the game will end even though the actual rocket didn't touch the object. So basically how can I make the rock image view not recognize the parts of the rocket image view which are empty? Basically a triangular shaped image view.
Thank you for your help. Let me know if you need more info or want to see the code I have for them to collide.
You analytically present the triangle with 3 points and a rock with a center and radius then find and implement an algorithm checking a hit test between those 2 shapes. Or draw the two shapes onto some graphics context using an appropriate blending and check for overlapping pixels (for instance draw one as red and another as green and look if a pixel that is both red and green exists) you could actually do that with 2 image views having those colors and .5f alpha added on the 3rd invisible view but you would need to get the image from the view and then iterate through all the pixels. In any of the cases do this check only after the corresponding view frames overlap.

ccDraw. Fill screen everywhere except on sprite

So I am trying to get a very basic "flashlight"-style thing going in one of my games.
The way I was getting it to work, was having a layer on top of my game screen, and this layer would draw a black rectangle with ~ 80% opacity, creating the look of darkness on top of my game scene.
ccDrawSolidRect(ccp(0,0), ccp(480,320), ccc4f(0, 0, 0, 0.8));
What I want to do is draw this rectangle EVERYWHERE on the screen, except for around a cone of vision that will represent the "light source".
What this would create would be a dark overlay on top of everything except for the light, giving it the illusion of a torch/light/flashlight.
The only way I can foresee this happening is by using ccDrawSolidPoly(), but since the position of the light source changes, so would the vertices for the poly.
Any suggestions on how to achieve this would be great.
You can use ccDrawSolidPoly() and avoid having to manually update vertices. For this you can create a new subclass of CCNode representing your light object, and do your custom shape drawing in its -(void)draw method.
The ccDraw...() functions will draw relative to the local sprite coordinates, so you can then move and rotate your new sprite to suit your needs and cocos2d will do the vertices transformations for you.
Update: I found out that you might be better off subclassing CCDrawNode instead of CCNode, as it has some facilities for raw OpenGL drawing (OpenGL's vertexArrayBuffer and vertexBufferObject internal variables and a buffer for vertices, their colors and their texCoords). If your stuff is very simple, maybe subclassing the plain CCNode is enough.
Could a png be used instead as a mask, as the layer above
Like that binocular vision you sometimes see in cartoons?
Or a filter similar to a photoshop mask that darkens as it grows outwardly to wards the edge of the screen
Just a thought anyway...
A picture of more of what your trying to explain might be good too

XNA Alpha Blending With Primitives and Sprites

I've been using XNA for awhile now and I really enjoy using its interface. Right now we're trying to make a "fog of war" system. We're making an RTS and we're basically trying to obscure the map. Units on the map have influence, and show what's happening. They reveal a specific area on the map. Previously we used a tile based interface but we weren't happy with the appearance. Instead, we decided to draw a black mask on the screen, then reveal a transparent circle with DrawUserPrimitives. Here's the problem: When we draw a black mask on the screen, followed by the transparent circle, the screen is entirely black. Reversing the order doesn't change anything either. We've also tried every SpriteBatch BlendState we can find.
OUR CURRENT METHOD:
Right now, we're drawing a full black texture onto the screen, then drawing a transparent circle. The result is an entirely black screen.
OUR DESIRED OUTCOME:
Drawing the circle will reveal a section of the screen, but keep the rest obscured. We'd be able to draw multiple circles, all with their own radius, that would could be near each other without causing problems.
Basically, we're trying to draw a black mask, but reveal portions of the screen. We can't just make a circle texture and make the edges transparent, because we're trying to make the center of the circle transparent. We can't make the center transparent, because then when two such textures were near each other, their borders would show up. How would I go about making the mask, then revealing sections of it?
Regards
Ares
You could render the graphics normally to one render target, then paint the visible area in white on a black background in another render target, then render the second into the first with the Min BlendFunction.
Alternately, using only one render target, draw the graphics normally, then clear the alpha channel (by painting a rectangle over the whole screen with ColorWriteChannels = Alpha and alpha blend factors both 0), then draw the visible area with ColorWriteChannels = Alpha only.

how to create a little arrow in a rectangle

I am trying to create a little arrow in the middle of one of the sides of a rectangle. ( like twitter tweet button).
Any ideas how to do it in fireworks cs4 ?
Thanks.
There are two ways of doing this and unlike all the answers presented here, they are going to give you more freedom if you want to resize your shape and yes the triangle will be a part of your final shape not a superimposed two shapes.
Extending a shape with Pen tool
First, start with a rectangle. It can have rounded corner, however you like it. Then, you can either ungroup it or selecting the subselection tool (the white arrow in the tools panel) and clicking on one of the corners, you can make it editable for the Pen tool. Then, choosing the Pen tool, click three times on the left side of the rectangle, creating three points apart from each other along the edge. Back to subselection tool and select the middle one. Clicking a few times on the left arrow key on your keyboard will make it go to left. Since we are altering the base shape, your new shape can receive further filters, stroke colors etc.
Adding your shape to another shape
Create your rectangle and triangle shape anyway you want to see it. Position triangle so the right of it is just over the left edge of the rectangle. Give it 1-2 px of intersection area if you want, you'll most likely play with this approach to have best results. Both objects selected, go to Modify menu and select Union under Combine Paths. This option will merge both shapes. Since, FW is going to approximate both object styles, you can a blurred stroke if you already had strokes in your objects. You can adjust it but some people thing the method described above is better since they are editing the original image so it's more constructive than guessing the outcome of this merging operation. As usual, using the Pen tool, you can refine your shape.
Have fun.
This question really doesn't belong on Stack Overflow, but I'll answer anyway, since I'm not sure where it should go.
If this is what you mean:
then try this:
Create a small triangle.
Rotate the triangle 90 degrees to the left, so that it looks like the arrow.
Position the triangle on the side of the rectangle.
Change the triangle's color to the same color as the rectangle.

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