#forevermaze

Using Firebase in a 2D Tile-Based Online Game (MMORPG)

This article will teach a simple way to create a real-time game in Swift (such as a 2D MMORPG). It will build upon the previous article, which set up the data structures.

Buffering the Screen

As I explained in the previous article, one of the hard parts about a 2.5D game like ForeverMaze is the need to load data before it appears on screen (buffering it). This ensures that by the time the object…

Creating D-Pad Controls for an iOS Game in Swift & SpriteKit

Learn how to control a character for your game with “D-Pad.” This tutorial will show you how to use Swift to create a simple but powerful control structure.

Download Direction.swift

What Is a D-Pad?

A “D-Pad” is short for “directional pad,” one of the most common game controller input styles.

Of course, modern mobile devices do not have physical buttons. So we need to create our own D-Pad…

Animated Sprites for SpriteKit and Swift with TexturePacker

This article will show you how to create sprite sheets and load them into your SpriteKit game with Swift. It includes source code that makes the whole process painless.

In 2D games you generally will have one or more “sprites,” which are simply images that represent an object. This becomes a bit tricky when you have multiple frames of animation and multiple cardinal directions. For example, in a…

Simple Mobile App Split Testing with Facebook Analytics

Fancy A/B testing suites are great, but sometimes you need something dead-simple. Facebook analytics has all the power you need for basic split testing in your mobile app. In this article, I’ll show you how I set up 3-way split test on the difficulty of the mobile game ForeverMaze.

Download the Source Code for Analytics.swift

Facebook Analytics: Treatment Assignment

To “assign a treatment” means…

Swift Tutorial: Real-Time Data Synchronization with Firebase

In this tutorial, I’ll introduce a data class that “magically” synchronizes in real-time via Firebase. You interface with it like any normal local object, but it actually is always in-sync with the server. We’ll learn about intermediate topics in Swift like KVO and Reflection.

  For example, if I add a new variable in my subclass, dynamic var health:Int = 0 , the value is atomically initialized…

How-To: Code Wrap-Around Grid Coordinates for a 2.5D Game in Swift

This article will show you how to create an “infinite” coordinate system for a 2.5D game.

The video goes into much more depth than the article, so look there for explanations.

Download Source: Coordinate.swift

What is 2.5D?

In a “2.5D” or “isomorphic” game, the world is rotated by 45 degrees to give a sense of depth.

Here’s a screenshot from ForeverMaze:

It can be tricky to translate between…