NSConf Notes: Games with Core Animation
by john on Feb.21, 2010, under Uncategorized
Drew McCormack wrote Sumo Master as a hobby project and to learn Core Animation.
Pretty simple top down 2d game.
Iterative design process. Accelerometer control didn’t work out. Went with touch.
Wrinklypea.com does design work, has some really nice looking UI and character design work.
For many things you can let Apple handle the animation for you. Views, buttons, help system, etc. Use modal transition styles to control how view controllers come in and out of view.
You can apply CA animations to UI elements in order to spiff up your UI.
Trick for squashing sumos: move the origin from the center of the sumo to the rear and then scale in along the y.
Performance tips: reduce the number of layers, merge layers that you can, make layers smaller, opaque layers are faster, cache CATransform3D objects.
http://bit.ly/sumophysics for info on the physics of the game.
