iOS 7 Sprite Kit

IndieDragon

Seeing that Apple has pretty much replaced cocos2d with a native Sprite Kit framework, do you see the development of a new runtime happening before the official iOS 7 release? Where does the importance of this runtime stand with you, compared to new spine editor features?

IndieDragon

thomzon

I have just found out about Spine, and it looks amazing. My next project will probably start after Sprite Kit has been made publicly available. I might try it out, so I am also very interested in the answer to the above question.

Nate

I doubt cocos2d is replaced so easily, but we can't add more runtimes until the Kickstarter goals are complete. We made promises and have to keep them.

thomzon

Thanks for answering!

You're right about cocos2d, it will clearly not be replaced, especially for those that want to make cross-platform stuff or that are good enough to tweak cocos2d code by themselves.
I am making games as a hobby, so no time for cross-platform stuff. The simplicity of the Sprite Kit physics engine and the 100% Objective-C argument is very appealing to me.

It is clear however that you have priorities, I didn't know anything about the kickstarter. I'll stick to cocos2d as long as I need skeletal animation. It would still be good to know if a Sprite Kit runtime is something you might consider in the future.

Nate

Certainly in the future having a SpriteKit runtime would be great.

All of the tasks marked green are Kickstarter goals:
https://trello.com/board/spine/5131e9578f174c521c0059d9

IndieDragon

Great! Yeah, it would be awesome to be able to leverage a native iOS framework with skeletal animation. I agree with the cross platform argument of why cocos2d will stick around, but I could definitely see a high adoption rate of Sprite Kit over cocos2d on the iOS side. However it pans out, I think it's a runtime that will definitely be an important tool to have so I threw the question out there. Looking forward to the future!

Lazrhog

Hmm, my custom Obj-C Framework might come in useful for this. I will have to see how the iOS 7 Sprite Kit works. Right now I get blistering speed by rendering all sprites in a list built using the runtime in a shader. Hopefully the sprite kit would support something like that ....

tskarthik

Any considerations to include SpriteKit runtime in the upcoming Kickstarter ?

Nate

I'm not sure. We'd like to focus on new, big features for the KS. SpriteKit can still be done of course.

simon

Hey guys, in case you care for a very humble version of iOS 7 SpriteKit runtime, that is unofficial, please take a look at https://github.com/simonkim/spine-spritekit

I'm in the beginning phase of my project and it definitely requires both Spine and SpriteKit so I had to write this piece of code. Hope it might be helpful for someone…

simon

Nate

Added to the runtime page, thanks!

Why not extend spine-c and just implement the rendering for SpriteKit? 🙂

simon

@Nate i just figured out that calling spine-c directly from SpriteKit is the way to go after writing bunch of wrapper classes just to understand how spine-c works. i will probably work on that way to avoid unnecessary wrappers once all the feasibility test completes.

Nate

Sounds good! 🙂

Noch

how to manage the animate ? I cannot change or run other animate with this tools anybody can help?