Is there a way to spawn nodes uniformly? - swift

Question

I have a game where circles are moving up and down lines like so:
http://i.stack.imgur.com/5zKS4.png
, and Im using a .plist file to generate them, but its a little monotonous.Is there another way to generate several columns of circles uniformly without using a .plist file? Will post code if necessary.

Answer 1

You could write a function like this:
func createCirclesOnLine(line : CGFloat){
//Set this to however low you want the circles to start.
var currentY : CGFloat = -20.0
//Set this to however high you want the circles to go
let maxY = self.size.height + 100
//Set this to the spacing you want between the circles
let spacing : CGFloat = 50
while currentY < maxY {
let circle = SKShapeNode(circleOfRadius: 20)
circle.position = CGPoint(x: line, y: currentY)
self.addChild(circle)
currentY += spacing
}
}
And then pass it the line (think longitude) of wherever you want the circles to be drawn:
let line = self.size.width / 2
createCirclesOnLine(line)
Is that what you're looking for?
EDIT: To answer your question about how to use this multiple times:
If you want multiple lines of circles on the screen, you can simply decide what lines (again, think longitude) you want to place the circles on. For instance, if I wanted three equally spaced lines of circles on the screen, I would do the following:
let line = self.size.width / 4
createCirclesOnLine(line)
createCirclesOnLine(line * 2)
createCirclesOnLine(line * 3)
If you try this and don't see all of the lines, you might need to add this
scene.size = skView.bounds.size
to the viewDidLoad method in your ViewController.swift right under
skView.ignoresSiblingOrder = true
since you are running the app in portrait mode.