cocos2d for iPhone

A fast, easy to use, free, and community supported 2D game engine

1. 

   pcman
   Member

   Hi,

   I am new to IPhone programming and cocos2d. I would need your help to get on the good track to create the first application.

   I am trying to create a jigsaw puzzle application. Can you give me some advice to choose the good ways to implement it?
   I have following questions:

   1) Atlas Sprite
   I read here on the forum that the most efficient way is to use a technique involving a single texture image and many sprites referencing it?
   Is this correct? I do not understand if this applies in my case. As jigsaw puzzle pieces are not square and they interfere each other, I think I would need to use a mask and process each piece. Then pieces cannot be considered anymore parts of the original anymore.
   So maybe I need to preprocess at runtime the original image, to cut rectangular pieces, mask them and then compose a tiled image.
   Then this piece I would reference using the Atlas technique. I am on the good way?
   The preprocessing I described is doable? It will take a longtime to complete? I would need to do it at runtime as I intend to let the user to choose
   own images for the puzzle game.

   2) Maybe I should use a simple sprites?
   I would need again to obtain puzzle pieces by masking the original image against a black shape of puzzle piece.
   I wonder if I should first crop a rectangular piece of the original image or maybe this is not necessary and it's a waste of time?
   On the other hand if I don't do this I think I will waste memory with unnecessary big rectangles.

   Thanks

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   gaminghorror
   Member

   Atlas Textures are useful to:

   - improve rendering speed
   - conserve memory (RAM)

   They have nothing to do with the shape of the sprites. Sprites are always rectangular. But they can have transparent regions. So you don't need any preprocessing, all you need to do is find the proper spacing between the puzzle tiles so they fit together neatly. And of course, each individual tile is a seperate sprite. It's really that simple. No need to mask anything - unless of course you want to be able to rip apart any image that the user may choose, for example by picking one from his camera roll.

   I suggest to start using simple sprites since you're having trouble with the concept at this stage it doesn't matter if you start with using an Atlas, you can always change that later. First you should take some puzzle sprites and arrange them on the screen so that they fit together and you learn how it is done in principle.

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   pcman
   Member

   Thanks. I will start with simple sprites as it's easier.
   To summarize: I obtain each puzzle part by
   masking full image against a black puzzle
   shape. Afterwards should I crop it, or let it
   big as the margins will be transparent anyway?

   Posted 1 year ago #

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