This seems like such a basic concept but there is really no good answer.
I currently have a pretty basic setup, in my game's scene, I have an enum gameState which is currently either inGame or gamePaused.
I have my button set up, and I have it so pressing simply toggles gameState.
Then, to make it work, I have two separate update methods: One for when gamePaused, one for when inGame.
This works for 95% of my game, as the updates in my game can be pretty readily started and stopped without any issues. There are some issues I cannot tackle though.
First and foremost are actions. I use SKActions for a bit of my project (some movement, scaling, fading...) and this method does NOT pause them. This can be catastrophic in certain points. Secondly, this doesn't handle particles, physics, and a few other things that are not directly associated to my update methods.
The only clue I have is self.view.paused = YES, but that isn't going to work either.
First off, this DOES fix my actions, particles, and physics problem... kinda. But This question suggests that SKActions aren't actually PAUSED by this, but actually STOPPED completely. Is this true? If it is, then it won't work smoothly either because my actions are thrown out of whack.
Also, pausing the view seems to do what it says: stop everything. EVERYTHING. Newbie question here, but how am I supposed to get any code to run at that point? It's all cut off. Is this where I need subViews? I have never used a subView yet, but it sounds like its what I want in this case.
Simply put, there are a lot of unanswered questions for me, and I don't know how to proceed. I'm hoping there's some 'standard procedure' for pausing in Sprite Kit, but with pausing the view halting actions I truly have no idea where to proceed.
Should I move away from using actions? Is my idea of a pause subView sound?
I don't want to babble, all I want to know is how you go about pausing in your average Sprite Kit project. Additional info provided upon request.
Pausing a node will pause (not stop) the node's actions, and i suppose pause will also be applied to all children of the paused node in the same way. All other unpaused nodes will continue to run their actions to completion.
You should have a "game layer" node with all game nodes in them that you want to pause, and then just pause that "game layer" node. Then have a "pause game menu" node where you add all the pause menu stuff you need which will continue to function normally even if the game layer is paused.
Be very sure you do not use performSelector or NSTimer or GCD or any other scheduling methods besides actions or the scene's update: method because those will not adhere to a node's paused state.
Pausing the view effectively freezes everything in it, pausing the scene according to some will not pause the update: calls - but I have not verified this myself. If this were the case you can always check inside the update method whether a given node that you send a message to is paused and if so, decide not to send certain messages to that node.
I just called a map function on all children of the scene and set the paused property to true
self.children.map{($0 as SKNode).paused = false}
By setting it to true you can easily undo the freeze.
EDIT:
Better use a for-loop to iterate over the children.
for node in self.children as [SKNode] {
node.paused = false
}
I can tell you what I did in my game:
Pause the SKView on -applicationWillResignActive: (or equivalent, using NSNotifications),
Un-pause the SKView on -applicationDidBecomeActive: (or equivalent, using NSNotifications),
For the actual game scene only, I set a boolean flag _isPaused when resigning active, and if it is true I just skip the -update: method (frame updates). (I also show the "paused" menu when the user resumes the app).
...But my game is a simple puzzle game, and there's no long actions that should continue past the pause/resume. I can not confirm right now that all actions are aborted, but I think it's not the case.
I also used self.children.map{($0 as SKNode).paused = false} and it does work if you create a var layer of type SKSpriteNode and add it on top of the scene. But I also have an NSTimer I'm using to spawn sprites on the scene. Everything currently on the scene is paused, but sprites keep appearing and moving across the screen. It is not pausing the spawning.
I tried pausing the NSTimer when I call the above code by setting repeats to false, then setting it to true when I remove the layer but it doesn't work. I also tried self.scene?.view?.paused = true but that freezes everything and the layer I create does not even appear onscreen.
You need to set the delegate for the View!
func PauseGame(){
self.scene.view.paused = true
}
fun playGame(){
self.scene.pause = false
}
This function is work perfectly if you are not using the NSTimer to call a function. If you use NSTimer your view will pause perfectly but when you play the game again by play game functionality you see that all the functions that use the NSTimer function that runs in the back end and your screen full with your sprite-kits. So when you use NSTimer in the function you have to first pause the NSTimer functions also after that this function work perfectly.
//For Pause
func pauseGame() {
scene?.view?.paused = true
}
//For play.
func playGame() {
scene?.view?.paused = false
}
Related
How would you go about pausing and resuming a UIDynamicAnimator's physics simulation? There is no way to programmatically pause and resume. There is a "paused" state when all items are at rest however I am am looking for something different. For example, I'd like to have an item being pulled by a gravity field, then press a pause button to pause the simulation, and then press a resume button and have the simulation resumed as if nothing happened. The item maintains it's trajectory, velocity, etc.
My hunch is that I have to somehow save the item's physics properties, remove the dynamic behaviors, and then add the dynamic behaviors back to mimic the saved physics properties from before. Is this the right approach?
You can do this only by removing all behaviours using removeAllBehaviors().
To restart the simulation you have to add each behavior
I am writing a clone of the old Space Invaders game. The invaders are moved during update() and drop bombs randomly; the player ship moves when the screen is touched. If an invader bomb hits the player, I want everything to stop except for the player's ship death animation. Once this is complete, I want everything to start again.
What the best way to achieve this? I considered enumerating over all nodes, setting the paused property to true; adding a check in update() to see if the death animation was running on the player and skip movement if it was and similarly ignoring user input if the animation was running.
Another approach would have been to have a world node of which everything is a child. I could then pause the world node and add a copy of the player's ship to the scene which runs the animation, making it look like everything has stopped except the player's ship death animation.
Both these seem a lot of work for the effect I want. Any suggestions?
You could make two invisible ,rootNode where your enemies, your objects and all your game enviroments (labels, coins..) are childs:
self.rootNode.addChild(enemy1)
and another rootShipNode where you have added your player.
With this approach you can stop all when you pause self, or put in pause the invisible nodes whenever you want.
You can adopt this process to add also a pauseNode (SKNode) to your scene:
var pauseNode: SKNode! // a node with resume, go to menu, buttons
self.addChild(pauseNode)
When you press your pause button, you can open your pauseNode and launch:
self.rootNode.paused = true
self.rootPlayerNode.paused = true
but all animations and object added to self, pauseNode elements and animations included, are in running.
I'm near the end of developing a game, and long story short, the game will be over when an object crashes into one of the obstacles. I've got that part down and the game runs really well by itself, but there is one more step I am looking to add in.
I would like to add in an in-app purchase of a 'play on' feature, that is, starting where the user's game originally ended so they can continue on. I'm okay with in-app purchases on the whole, but I guess what I want to know is how does one make it possible to 'play on' following the in app purchase? I'm just looking for something basic I can build on.
I'm a Stack newbie, as I've only created an account today (but I've been programming for a little while and this site has helped me so many times), so I'm sorry if there has been a duplicate thread made elsewhere. I did look around for an hour or so before deciding to post (and Google was no help).
As a general stack overflow rule you should always post some of your own code or what code you have played around with.
I am actually also looking to integrate a playOn button in my game. Now I haven't actually found the perfect solution for this yet but hopefully this helps you get on the right track.
Step 1:
How have you programmed your game over scenario?
Are you just pausing the scene, are you pausing nodes or are you removing all children from your scene?
The way I pause my scene is by creating a worldNode and than adding all objects that I need paused to the worldNode.
You can read my two answered questions for more detail
Keeping the game paused after app become active?
Sprite moves two places after being paused and then unpaused
This way when I pause my game I dont actually pause the scene which gives me more flexibility adding pauseMenus etc. Furthermore its seems smoother than pausing the skView.
I also call pause when the player died, which means I could resume the enemies/obstacles from where they left of if I call resume.
So my game over method looks like this
func gameOver() {
pause() // call pause method to pause worldNode etc
//show game over screen including playOn button
}
Step 2:
Now in regards to respawning the player, it depends on how he is positioned, how far he can move etc.
If your player is mostly in the same area than you can probably just respawn you player manually once "PlayOn" is pressed and than resume the game as if it was just paused.
So once your playOn button is pressed you can call a method like so
func playOnPressed() {
// Remove current player
// Doesnt have to be called, you could just change the position
player.removeFromParent()
// Add player manually again to scene or just reposition him
...
// Remove obstacle that killed player
// haven't found a great solution for this yet
// You could make the player not receive damage for 5 seconds to make sure you dont die immediately after playOn is pressed
// Call resume method, maybe with delay if needed
resume()
}
If your player position could be all over the screen, as in my game, I have been playing around with a few things so far.
I created a position property to track the player position
playerPosition = CGPoint!
and than in my scene update method I constantly update this method to the
actual position of the player.
override func update(currentTime: CFTimeInterval) {
if gameOver = false {
playerPosition = player.position
}
}
I than have been playing around with the "playOnPressed" method,
func playOnPressed() {
// Remove current player
//Doesnt have to be called, you could just change the positioon
player.removeFromParent()
// Add player manually again to scene or just reposition him
...
player = SKSpriteNode(...
player.position.x = playerPosition.x - 40 // adjust this so it doesnt spawn where he died but maybe a bit further back
player.position.y = playerPosition.y // adjust if needed
// Remove obstacle that killed player
// haven't found a great solution for this yet
// You could make the player not receive damage for 5 seconds to make sure you dont die immediately after playOn is pressed
// Call resume method, with delay if needed
resume()
}
I hope this helps you playing around with your playOn button, if someone has a better way I would also appreciate it immensely.
In my game in swift / SpriteKit, I have a problem when the user quits the app and opens it up again. If the game is on the pause menu and everything is paused, when the game is reloaded the game is unpaused but the labels on the pause menu do not disappear. How do I keep the game paused when I reopen it? I have tried
func applicationWillEnterForeground(application: UIApplication) {
// Called as part of the transition from the background to the inactive state; here you can undo many of the changes made on entering the background.
let scene = GameScene(size: CGSize(width: 2048, height: 1356))
scene.view?.paused = true
}
But this is not doing anything. I have also tried pause() but that messes things up. Any help is appreciated.
You want to use the applicationWillResignActive function to pause your scene, by doing something like scene.speed = 0 which will properly pause your scene (don't know why, but it doesn't quite work just using pause). Here you can also display your pause menus (which you appear to be doing).
Then you want to use the applicationDidBecomeActive function to continue your game. Here you do your checks to see if (guessing here) your "resume" button is pressed, and in the response method for that, set the scene.speed = 1. Here your response method, do anything that requires starting back up (animations, actions, hiding your pause menu(s), or music).
I will say, these are the two functions that I use, you are free to use whichever two functions you would like that have a on/off kind of thing. I've found these to be very reliable.
I am developing a tic tac toe game for iOS and I am using a combination of UIButtons and UIImageViews to allow for user interaction and to display the moves made. My problem is that the buttons continue to accept user input before the cpu makes it's move, which breaks my game logic. I have made several attempts to toggle the userInteractionEnabled property, but I have only been able to turn it off. The engine that gets everything started in the game is my buttonPressed method. I also toggle the userInteractionEnabled property within this method and therein lies my problem: How do I re-enable the property after disabling user interaction? Is there a method that is called in between events that I can overwrite?
I have searched the web and I have searched through the developer documentation provided by Apple and I found information on the touchesBegan and touchesEnded methods. However, from what I understand, those methods need to be explicitly called which brings me back to my original problem of not being able to call those functions without the user's interaction.
If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it! I have been racking my brain over this for the past couple of weeks and I am just not seeing a solution.
I'd think that for a game like tic-tac-toe, calculating the countermove should be so fast that it can be done immediately in response to the first button press. If you're doing something complicated to calculate the next move, like kicking off a thread, you might want to reconsider that.
Let's say, though, that your game is something like chess or go, where coming up with a countermove might take a bit longer. Your view controller should have a method to make a move for the current player, let's call it -makeMove:. Your -buttonPressed action should call that method to make a move for the user. In response, -makeMove: should update the state of the game, switch the current player to the next player. If the new current player is the computer, it should then disable the controls and start the process of calculating the next move. Let's imagine that's done by invoking some NSOperation, so that coming up with the next move is an asynchronous task. Once the operation has come up with a move, it should again invoke -makeMove: (by calling -performSelectorOnMainThread:), which will again update the game state and the current player. This time, though, it should see that the new current player is not the computer, and so it should re-enable the controls.