You may have noticed things have been quiet here recently. The reason is that I have been hard at work trying to learn new things myself. Machine Learning is to blame for my currently distracted state, but if you haven’t looked into it, perhaps I can help you catch the bug too.
Author: admin
Scriptable Objects
Scriptable Objects are a special type of data object in Unity. They have several important benefits but may not work ideally for every scenario. In this lesson we will cover what they are and how to use them.
SpriteKit – Anchors & Safe Area
I’m still on my SpriteKit journey and am ready to tackle a few more hurdles. Primarily, these include making some easy and reusable code to allow me to place one node relative to another. We will then expand on this solution to help us place one node relative to the screen’s edges. Finally, this solution will also show how to handle the “safe area” you’ll see on an iPhone X.
Core Data ECS
As a native iOS developer I have found a wide range of amazing tools and libraries that are freely available. Some of this is designed toward a specific end goal, but much of it is very flexible and could even be used for a variety of purposes including game development. With this in mind, I decided to explore what an Entity Component System (ECS) might look like when backed by Core Data. So far I am enjoying the results, and welcome you to try it for yourself.
Make a CCG – JSON
In the previous lesson I hard-coded a demo deck of cards. This wasn’t “necessary” because of my architectural choices. It was merely a simple placeholder which didn’t require me to commit to any kind of data store or structure. Still, to help avoid any confusion, I decided I would go ahead and provide an example post that shows how the same deck could have been created with some sort of asset – in this case a JSON file.
SpriteKit Tile Maps Intro
A lot of sprite games include tiled backgrounds. Tile Maps are a special tool which allow the creation of these backgrounds without needing large arrays of nodes, which could otherwise potentially cripple your game’s performance. This post will provide a quick overview for tile maps and features including: tile animations, tile variations, 8-Way Adjacency Groups, Custom Adjacency Groups, and a Tile Definition’s User Data.
Make a CCG – Spells & Abilities
Any card can have special abilities – by this I mean that it can cause one or more of our “Game Actions” to trigger based on special criteria. Spell cards are unique in that they must have at least one ability in order to serve a purpose. In this lesson, we will begin implementing spells, and by necessity, will also create an ability system that we can apply to our other cards as well.
Make a CCG – Targeting
Many cards require a “target” as part of their play requirements. For example, a spell might heal an injured ally, or a minion’s battlecry ability may deal damage to an opponent. Sometimes the target(s) can be chosen automatically, and other times they require the user to manually pick. In this lesson we will begin the process of supporting manually targeted play actions.
SpriteKit Recipe – Custom Scale Mode
One of the first learning hurdles encountered with SpriteKit comes when determining how to get the contents from a scene to display as expected on various devices, each with their own resolution and aspect ratios. We will review a scene’s scaleMode property as a built-in solution that may work for some projects. Then, we will build a custom solution to overcome the limitiations we were otherwise stuck with.
Make a CCG – Taunt
While a card’s stats such as cost, attack, and hit points can add a lot of strategy to how you build your deck, its set of abilities may impact your strategy even more. In this lesson we will add a new ability to our minion cards called Taunt, so that whenever it appears on the battlefield, the enemy must attack it before it can attack non-taunt minions.