Pixel Art Game in Cocos2D: Changeable Colors

Question

We are working on a pixel-art based game for iPhone using Cocos2D. We have a peculiar requirement - we would like users to be able to change the color scheme for some objects. So, for example, we might have a red car with blue wheels; the user can use a selector to change among different color schemes, like yellow body and green wheels; black body and white wheels; and so on.

The simple approach, of course, would be to pre-render the art; but this will increase the build of the game enormously, since we have 40 color combinations and dozens of objects.

What is the best way to approach this in your opinion? We are complete newbies to Cocos2D, having worked only on non-gaming apps, so even pointing us to the right direction in the Cocos2D docs would be more than enough!

Thanks all!

Answer 1

Have you looked at actions? Specifically CCTintBy or CCTintTo. Make an image, say a grey wheel then tint it to the color you want with an action:

CCSprite *wheel = //make a sprite
[wheel runAction:[CCTintTo actionWithDuration:0.5 red: r green: g:blue: b]];