So I am reading on z-order mixing and this is the only way to acomplish it(between texture atlases) that I have found:
http://johnehartzog.com/2009/05/using-cocos2d-atlasspritemanager/
Is this currently the best way to go? It sounds like you will lose some of the magic stuff like effects when you do this, or atleast vastly complicate them. Has any more come of this topic since this article was written back in august?
My current appstore title Sub Hunt had 2 main texture atlases(was written in my own engine) and I could not fit all the explosions art on the same atlas as the units. I also had fire animations on a separate atlas. However fire needs to burn "from" a boat and you would have to have the z of the boat match the z of the fire burning on it. My engine would just swap gl textures when this was needed, but I would get into trouble in cocos2d unless I do the aforementioned trick. Any thoughts?
Because these things were not a constant activity it wasn't a big performance hit but they provided nice visual enhancement when they happened.