02fentym
02fentym

Reputation: 1792

Purpose of SpriteKit sks files

I've watched the WWDC 2014 session (#608 "Best practices for building sprite kit games") a couple of times and I just want to clarify the purpose behind using .sks files. Am I supposed to put separate assets into each .sks file? Here's a little bit of background into what I'm doing. I'm creating a Mac app that will text piano students to play chords using a MIDI keyboard. Chords will appear on the screen and they'll play them one by one and get a score. Here's a mockup of what the app may look like. Side note: for those that may know music, we're using the numeric version of chords instead of explicit names like Cm, etc.

Would I have a separate .sks file for each element of the UI. For instance, one for the green timer bar, one for the piano keys, etc. The example that they use in the video is a pretty simple one. I am subclassing SKSpriteNode for the timer and on-screen piano so how would I handle the resources for those. They are not static objects and they will change either over time (timer) or due to user input (keyboard)

I really want to organize my project using best practices. Please help. Thanks in advance.

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Upvotes: 3

Views: 916

Answers (1)

uchuugaka
uchuugaka

Reputation: 12782

Sks files are serialized SKScene objects. The intent is to provide something like interface builder for constructing SKScene scenes visually. The common use case is to layout complex backgrounds or levels and define starting positions. You would only have one file per scene in many cases. However you can use the sks files to organize and serialize conceptual components of a scene, as demonstrated in versions of the Apple Adventure sample code released since the sks format and scene editor were introduced with Xcode 6

In the screenshot above, you could organize the project into sections that are fairly generic and reusable, like the keyboard for one file and the hud atop the scene for another file. However, you could put them all in one file, then duplicate the file for variations on a theme.

Upvotes: 1

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