How to implement a space shooter with SpriteKit and SWIFT - Part 3: Create a HUD

Adding a HUD with SpriteKit and SWIFT

Tutorial Overview:

• Part 1: Initial project setup, sprite creation and movement using SKAction and SKConstraint

• Part 2: Adding enemies, bullets and shooting with SKAction and SKConstraint

• Part 3: Adding a HUD with SKLabelNode and SKSpriteNode

• Part 4: Adding basic game logic and collision detection

• Part 5: Adding particles and sound 

• Part 6: GameCenter integration

• Part 7: iAd integration

• Part 8: In-App Purchases

Add the HUD:

I'll add a simple HUD which shows the score, the remaining lifes and a pause button. As a starting point you can download the code from tutorial part 2 here. 

First of all let's fix a bug in the sample code of my last post. Open GameViewController.swift and move the code from viewDidLoad to viewDidAppear. This is necessary because the orientation change to landscape might not be completed. In this case width and height are inverted, if we determine them in viewDidLoad:

How to implement a space shooter with SpriteKit and SWIFT - Part 2

Adding enemies, bullets and shooting with SKAction and SKConstraint

Tutorial Overview:

• Part 1: Initial project setup, sprite creation and movement using SKAction and SKConstraint

• Part 2: Adding enemies, bullets and shooting with SKAction and SKConstraint

• Part 3: Adding a HUD with SKLabelNode and SKSpriteNode

• Part 4: Adding basic game logic and collision detection

• Part 5: Adding particles and sound 

• Part 6: GameCenter integration

• Part 7: iAd integration

• Part 8: In-App Purchases

Add the enemies:

I'll add several enemy sprites. These will automatically follow and orient to the hero sprite.  You can download the code from Part 1 here.

How to implement a space shooter with SpriteKit and SWIFT - Part 1

Initial project setup, sprite creation and movement using SKAction and SKConstraint

Tutorial Overview:

• Part 1: Initial project setup, sprite creation and movement using SKAction and SKConstraint

• Part 2: Adding enemies, bullets and shooting with SKAction and SKConstraint

• Part 3: Adding a HUD with SKLabelNode and SKSpriteNode

• Part 4: Adding basic game logic and collision detection

• Part 5: Adding particles and sound 

• Part 6: GameCenter integration

• Part 7: iAd integration

• Part 8: In-App Purchases

1. Create a new universal project (template: game; language: Swift)

Writing games is more fun than writing a blog post: New teaser video for my upcoming tutorial

Sorry, I love writing blog posts, but this time I have written a small game instead of completing my tutorial. Here's another short teaser video:

That's all for today. The complete code will be available at GitHub soon.

Cheers,
Stefan

Follow @StefanJosten

Kick off for my new Tutorial: How to implement a space shooter with SpriteKit and SWIFT

I'm preparing a new tutorial: 

My goal is to implement a complete space shooter with SpriteKit and SWIFT.

Planned content is:

• Part 1: Initial project setup, sprite creation and movement using SKAction and SKConstraint

• Part 2: Adding enemies, bullets and shooting with SKAction and SKConstraint

• Part 3: Adding a HUD with SKLabelNode and SKSpriteNode

• Part 4: Adding basic game logic and collision detection

• Part 5: Adding particles and sound 

• Part 6: GameCenter integration

• Part 7: iAd integration

• Part 8: In-App Purchases

Here's a short teaser video:

The sample code will be available on GitHub

That's all for today.

Cheers,
Stefan

Follow @StefanJosten

HowTo: Implement targeting or follow behavior for sprites with SpriteKit and SKConstraint in SWIFT

Welcome to Part 14 of my blog series about iOS game development.

At the developer conference WWDC, in June this year, Apple showed a new class in SpriteKit: SKConstraint. It can be used to define constraints for the orientation, the distance or the position of SpriteKit nodes. In my todays blog post I'll show how to use SKContraints to implement a follow and targeting behavior. I have updated this tutorial to XCode 6.1!

How to use an Universal Storyboard in Xcode

Welcome to Part 13 of my blog series about iOS game development.

At the developer conference WWDC, in June this year, Apple showed a nice concept for targeting multiple form factors: The Universal Storyboard. Basically this replaces the iPad and the iPhone specific storyboards  with one universal storyboard. To enable different layouts for tablet and phone form factors it's working closely together with Autolayout and Size Classes.

I'll not explain Autolayout and Size Classes deeply in this post. My main motivation was to find out how to convert an old Xcode project with two storyboards into one universal storyboard. If you start a new project, the universal storyboard will be created by default.

As a start project you can use the MyGame project from my earlier posts. You can download it from GitHub: v0.9 

This sample needs Xcode 6.