14 DAY TRIAL // iOS 7 brings as many new features for end users as it does for developers, especially in the API and framework departments, where Apple has included enough new stuff to keep programmers busy for years to come.
One of the best new additions in iOS 7 is the Sprite Kit framework (identified as SpriteKit.framework). It provides a hardware-accelerated animation system which has been optimized for creating 2D and 2.5D games.
People are generally only familiar with 2D and 3D concepts in gaming, but there’s also 2.5D, which describes 2D graphical projections used to cause a series of images (or scenes) to simulate the appearance of being three-dimensional (3D).
2.5D can also take on the form of 3D gameplay that has been restricted to a two-dimensional plane.
What Apple’s Sprite Kit does is that it provides the infrastructure required by most games (regardless of their 2D or 3D nature), including a graphics rendering and animation system, sound playback support, and a physics simulation engine.
“Using Sprite Kit frees you from creating these things yourself and lets you focus on the design of your content and the high-level interactions for that content,” Apple says.
Sprite Kit content is broken down into scenes. These can include textured objects, video, path-based shapes, Core Image filters, etc., and Sprite Kit determines the most efficient way to render the objects on-screen.
Developers can use Sprite Kit to specify explicit actions they want to perform, whenever the content needs to be animated. The physics simulation engine can then be used to define physical behaviors (gravity, attraction, or repulsion) for the objects used.
A video game can be further refined with Xcode tools that complement Sprite Kit with creating particle emitter effects and texture atlases.
Developers can manage app assets and update Sprite Kit scenes using various Xcode tools.
Those who wish to learn more about how to use Sprite Kit are encouraged to see the Sprite Kit Programming Guide.
An example of how to use Sprite Kit to build a working app is available at code:Explained Adventure.
To access these resources, you need an Apple Developer subscription.