CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sprite-kitios10xcode8skemitternode
Bjørn Olav Ruud
Bjørn Olav Ruud

Reputation: 1493

SpriteKit SKEmitterNode particleAction not working in Xcode 8 / iOS 10

I have an iOS 10 SpriteKit project where I'm trying to put actions on particles from a basic particle emitter created from the "snow" particle template in Xcode 8:

let snowPath = Bundle.main.path(forResource: "Snow", ofType: "sks")!
snowEmitter = NSKeyedUnarchiver.unarchiveObject(withFile: snowPath) as! SKEmitterNode
snowEmitter.position = CGPoint(x: 0, y: size.height / 2)
snowEmitter.particlePositionRange = CGVector(dx: size.width, dy: 0)
snowEmitter.particleAction = SKAction.scale(to: 3, duration: 3)
effectLayer.addChild(snowEmitter) // effectLayer is a SKNode on the scene

The emitter works as it should, but no matter what kind of SKAction I set particleAction to it gets ignored. Has anyone else experienced this?

Update: Doesn't work with Xcode 7 and iOS 9 either.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 740

Answers (3)

Andy Dent
Andy Dent

Reputation: 17969

As a 2021 datapoint, whilst adding particle emitters to Touchgram, I spent a couple of days exploring this. I came to the conclusion that they were broken in iOS9 and never fixed.

Upvotes: 0

Confused
Confused

Reputation: 6278

There's another way to achieve the goal.

Make two or more particle systems.

Create two or more noise fields.

Bitmask match one each of the particle systems to one of the noise fields.

Put the noise fields down the bottom, where you want the wiggles to happen

Adjust the noise fields to taste.

Upvotes: 1

crashoverride777
crashoverride777

Reputation: 10664

I think this still might be a leftover iOS 9 bug, not 100% sure. I just tried myself and I cannot get it to work as well.

SKEmitterNode particleAction not working iOS9 Beta

Can you not achieve the same effect using the particles settings directly in snow.sks in the inspector on the right?

You are probably looking at †hose two settings and its subsettings.

1) Particle life cycle (start, range)

2) Particle scale (start, range, speed)

This article has a nice description of each setting.

http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/An_iOS_8_Sprite_Kit_Particle_Emitter_Tutorial#Particle_Birthrate

As a general tip

Your code is not very safe in the first 2 lines because you force unwrapped the snow particle. If you ever change the name and forget about it or the file becomes corrupted than you will crash. You should change it to something like this

guard let snowPath = Bundle.main.path(forResource: "Snow", ofType: "sks") else { return } // or if let snowPath = ...
snowEmitter = NSKeyedUnarchiver.unarchiveObject(withFile: snowPath) as? SKEmitterNode
...

You can also simply this code a lot by simple saying this where you define your snowEmitter property

let snowEmitter = SKEmitterNode(fileNamed: "Snow")

This will return an optional as well, just like your old code. Than in your method where you set up the emitter say something like this (dont use !)

if let snowEmitter = snowEmitter {
    snowEmitter.position = 
    ...
}

Hope this helps

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions