Apple provides the Game Controller framework to simplify supporting game controllers for games on Apple platforms. The Game Controller framework includes the GCVirtualController class for iOS games that displays a virtual controller on the touch screen. The virtual controller lets people play your game if they don’t have a physical game controller. The benefit of using Apple’s virtual controller is you don’t have to write your own. You have to do the following tasks to use a virtual controller in your iOS game:

You’re making a SpriteKit game. You have a sprite on the screen. You run the game, and the sprite falls off the screen. Why is this happening? The answer is gravity. If you add a physics body to a sprite, it is initially affected by gravity. Gravity is a downward force. The game launches, and the sprite moves down. Because there’s nothing in the scene to stop the sprite’s downward movement, it moves off the screen.

If you have a game where the scene doesn’t scroll, you want to prevent the player from moving off the screen. SpriteKit constraints provide a nice way to keep the player on the screen at all times. Creating a Position Constraint Start by creating a range that specifies the lower and upper limits for a sprite’s position. Call the SKRange initializer and supply the lower and upper limits. The initializer for SKRange takes floating point values.

What is SpriteKit? SpriteKit is Apple’s framework for making 2D games. Some of the game types you can make with SpriteKit include the following: Platform games Brick breaking games Arcade games RPGs Strategy games Word games Puzzle games SpriteKit is different than game engines like Unity, Unreal, and Godot. There is no dedicated SpriteKit app to make games. SpriteKit developers generally use one of the following apps: Xcode Swift Playgrounds Use Xcode if you have a Mac.

Many games have a need to generate random numbers. If you are making an iOS game with SpriteKit, the GameplayKit framework has classes for generating random numbers. Generating random numbers has two steps. Create a random number generator Generate a random number Creating a Random Number Generator Create an instance of GKRandomDistribution, which is GameplayKit’s class for generating random numbers. Supply the low and high values to define the range of numbers the generator can generate.

The Swift Playgrounds app lets you create iOS apps on an iPad. You can also make 2D games using the SpriteKit framework in Swift Playgrounds. This article shows you how to use SpriteKit in Swift Playgrounds. If you are new to Swift Playgrounds, read the following article: Intro to Making SwiftUI Apps with Swift Playgrounds You have to do the following to use SpriteKit in Swift Playgrounds: Create a SpriteKit scene Add a sprite view to the content view Show the scene in the sprite view Create a SpriteKit Scene Swift Playgrounds currently does not include a SpriteKit scene editor so you must create your scenes in code.

When you add a sprite to a SpriteKit scene from the scene editor, the only option is to create a sprite with a single color. A sprite with one color is OK for prototyping. But you’re going to eventually need to use real images for your sprite. Textures are the way to apply an image to a sprite so it looks like a spaceship, car, person, animal, or whatever your game needs.

In the Creating Your First SpriteKit Project article you created a game project in Xcode and removed Apple’s boilerplate code. Now you’re ready to start adding content to your game. Xcode’s scene editor is the tool most SpriteKit games use to add game content. Use Xcode’s scene editor to do things like build your game’s levels, design your game’s main menu, and create an end of game screen. Opening the Scene Editor Select a file with the extension .

Xcode playgrounds are good for prototyping game ideas, but if you want to get a SpriteKit game on your iPhone or iPad, you must create a project in Xcode. This article guides you through creating a SpriteKit project in Xcode. Choose the Game Project Template Launch Xcode and choose File > New > Project to create a project. When you choose File > New > Project the New Project Assistant opens.

I have seen many questions lately on Stack Overflow from people creating an iOS SpriteKit game project and having black bars on the edges of the screen. The cause of the issue is a bug in Xcode’s iOS game project template. When you create the project, the project does not include a storyboard for the launch screen. If you create a multiplatform game project, you will see a file called LaunchScreen.