Now that iOS7 has been released, I can show you what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
It’s a space shooter I first started working on last year after releasing version 1.2 of Sol: Sun Clock. I basically wrote it the hard way, not using any of the 2-D platforms like Cocos2D, thinking that my code would suit my needs better without the bulk. Plus, I wanted to simulate the glow of old vector arcade games, like Tempest, Asteroids, or Star Wars.<\/p>\n
I was pretty proud of the code, which for the technically-inclined used Quartz 2D drawing in Objective C, with lots of transforms, way easier than straight up OpenGL, but as it turns out, way too slow. I was getting 15FPS until planets started moving onscreen, and it plummeted to a measly 7FPS. I set the project aside and went to work on Sol: Sun Clock 2.0, while researching other 2D engines for this and Conqueror.<\/p>\n
This past June Apple announced Sprite Kit for iOS7, and I knew this was the natural fit for this game. I rewrote the code from scratch (well actually, using Apple sample code as a template), and am getting 30-60FPS easily, even with each star being its own sprite, which is something I’d normally never do, but hey, I’ve got the overhead so why not?<\/p>\n
Some of the crappiness of this video is my attempt at vector hardware emulation, but most of it is the YouTube encoding, so lower your expectations.<\/p>\n