SpriteKit position confusion - ios

In learning SpriteKit so I'm making a scene with 1 buttons. I do not understand the way positions work. What I read was that 0,0 was the bottom left corner and the default anchor point is in the middle of each button (0.5,0.5). The scene is scene.scaleMode = .AspectFill. If I write:
self.playButton.position = CGPointMake(self.playButton.size.width/2,CGRectGetMidY(self.frame))
self.addChild(self.playButton)
I get what is in the screenshot below.
If I set the playbutton.position.x to be self.playbutton.size.width/2 then I would assume it would be on the left edge of the screen. Not weirdly somewhat off the screen. I've read the documentation about size for a couple of days now and I still can't seem to understand it. I've also explicitly set:
self.size.width = 768
self.size.height = 1024
Meaning the scene size width and height. Also I have "Use Auto Layout" in the main storyboard checked.

If you change your scene's scale mode to .AspectFit you'll be able to quickly see what the problem is. The resolution you're setting for your scene is a completely different aspect ratio from that of your device. In fact, when I answered your last question, I assumed that your usage of the 768x1024 resolution meant that you were developing for an iPad, for which this is the correct resolution.
On an iPhone with a 4 inch screen, you should be setting the scene's size to be 320x568, and 320x480 for 3.5 inch screens. This can however be simplified by adding this line to the creating of your scene in your view controller. It will set the scene's size to the size of the view controller's view.
scene.size = skView.bounds.size

Related

Scale sprite kit game for all devices

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 }

How to make SKScene have fixed width?

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?

iOS Universal Device App with SpriteKit, how to scale nodes for all views?

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/

Why doesn't SKCameraNode center if aspect mismatch? Bug?

Is there a bug in SKCameraNode when used with .AspectFill on devices where the aspect ratio of the SKScene does not match that of the devices view?
I have a minimal demo of the issue I see: an SKScene created in an SKS file, to be 768w x 1024h, filled with an image (also 768w x 1024h). It's loaded with .AspectFill. An SKLabel is positioned in the middle of the scene programmatically. The demo is simply the out-of-the-box iOS template for a SpriteKit game, with a background image added.
An iPad in Portrait (so 768w x 1024h) displays this fine. An iPhone 6+ in Portrait (414w x 736h) displays fine. An iPhone 5S (320w x 568h) displays fine.
If I add a camera to the scene, position it in the middle by setting its coordinates to (384, 512) in the SKS file and set the scene to use it, the iPad is fine but now the iPhones (and any other device with a aspect ratio other than 3:4) does NOT work. It displays the right-hand side of the scene. It is not centered. Screen shot from the iPhone below.
The camera being in the middle of the scene, should ALWAYS work.
I am currently using a work-around. When you use .AspectFill the sides of the scene are cropped by an amount - let's call it cropAmount - to fit on the narrower screen. The work-around is to move the camera left, so it is off-center by cropAmount, then the scene displays correctly.
The background image here is an #3x of a 768w x 1024h background for my game. I've put in green the cropAmount corresponding to the SKView for 9:16, and in red the scene bounds. Given the camera is set in the middle of the scene, same as the label and the pink dot in the middle of the image, why is the center of the view not also there?
If this is a bug, and I leave in my "fix" where I offset the camera by cropAmount, later updates could break production code running on devices.
Also I am not using .ResizeFill as it doesn't fix the camera node issue, and would also mean that the assets are incorrectly sized and positioned in the scene for the thousands of lines of code and dozens of SKS files I already have over 6 months of work.
Question has been edited. Originally I had my "fix" added as an extension but this just caused confusion so I have removed it.

SkSpriteNode position in universal game

I'm creating universal game for all iOS devices in portrait mode using Swift. In GameViewController I'm creating scene like this:
let scene = GameScene(size:CGSize(width: 1536, height: 2048))
scene.scaleMode = .AspectFill
Background image has resolution 1536x2048, and so with above scaleMode on iPad it's displayed in its full size, on iPhone 6 1152x2048 is displayed with sides trimmed. Works perfectly fine on all devices, and only one background image is needed. Problem is that if I call for size.width or self.frame.size.width it always returns 1536, even if the actual visible area is e.g. 1152.
How can I set SkSpriteNode's position relative to visible area, so that it'll be for example 50x50 from the corner on every device?
How can I set SkSpriteNode's position relative to visible area, so
that it'll be for example 50x50 from the corner on every device?
The "visible area" is simply the view.
So you can make your positions relative to the view, and not the scene. I actually do this a lot in my game, which is universal and runs on both OS X and iOS.
In my case I typically do this for the user-interface, so I might have a scaled scene but I want to set some positions not relative to the scaled scene but relative to the visible area (i.e. the view).
To do this, you can write a function that converts view coordinates to the corresponding scene coordinates.
Here is my function that I use. Note that I subtract my desired y-position from height of view so that I can treat (0,0) as the bottom-left like sprite-kit does instead of the top-left like UIKit does.
func convert(point: CGPoint)->CGPoint {
return self.view!.convert(CGPoint(x: point.x, y:self.view!.frame.height-point.y), to: self)
}
Here is an example of using this function:
self.node.position = convert(CGPoint(x: 50, y: 50))
This will always force the position of the node to be at (50,50) relative to the view (the visible portion of the screen) regardless of how your scene is scaled and sized.
I don't think this is really the best approach. You should creating the GameScene based on SKView's size
let scene = GameScene(size: self.skView.bounds.size)
I don't think you should be setting one universal size for every device. You need to let the device set the scenes dimensions based on the screen's resolution. Then you need to be creating different images based on the device. 2x, 3x, 2x~ipad etc..
This tutorial is a good place to start:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/49695/sprite-kit-tutorial-making-a-universal-app-part-1

Resources