#texturepacker

I improved the workflow for animation loading a lot thanks to the libGDX TexturePacker tool! I really wish I knew it existed earlier, especially since it’s free and has lots of features.

I've put together a few Cocos2d extensions (categories) while crafting our more recent titles, including our latest project, Poker Puzzle Tour. By far, one of the extensions I've used the most is this category on CCSpriteFrameCache that I'll be sharing in this post.

Multipack Support

The first extension allows for importing the multipack sprite sheets that TexturePacker generates in a single line. It also allows special handling between device types, which is important because of texture size limits. For instance, many times assets for the iPhone might all fit onto a single 2048px x 2048px sprite sheet, while the same assets might need to be split across multiple sprite sheets on an iPad due to the images' bigger sizes (iPad images are typically twice the size of their iPhone counterparts).

- (void)addMultipackSpriteFramesWithFormat:(NSString *)format ipadhd:(NSUInteger)ipadhdCount hd:(NSUInteger)hdCount standard:(NSUInteger)standardCount { NSUInteger count = [self countFromIpadhd:ipadhdCount hd:hdCount standard:standardCount]; for (NSUInteger i = 0; i < count; i++) { [[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] addSpriteFramesWithFile:[NSString stringWithFormat:format, i]]; } } - (void)addMultipackSpriteFramesWithFormat:(NSString *)format textureFormat:(NSString *)textureFormat ipadhd:(NSUInteger)ipadhdCount hd:(NSUInteger)hdCount standard:(NSUInteger)standardCount { NSUInteger count = [self countFromIpadhd:ipadhdCount hd:hdCount standard:standardCount]; for (NSUInteger i = 0; i < count; i++) { [[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] addSpriteFramesWithFile:[NSString stringWithFormat:format, i] textureFilename:[NSString stringWithFormat:textureFormat, i]]; } } #pragma mark - Helpers - (NSUInteger)countFromIpadhd:(NSUInteger)ipadhdCount hd:(NSUInteger)hdCount standard:(NSUInteger)standardCount { NSUInteger count = 0; if ([EFDeviceUtilities isIPad] && [EFDeviceUtilities isRetina]) { count = ipadhdCount; } else if ([EFDeviceUtilities isRetina]) { count = hdCount; } else { count = standardCount; } return count; }

#import "CCSpriteFrameCache+EF.h" // Your sprite sheets should be named to accept a [0..n) suffix // Pass in a format string with a single %d to be replaced [[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] addMultipackSpriteFramesWithFormat:@"MY_LARGE_SPRITE_SHEET_BASENAME%d.plist" ipadhd:2 hd:1 standard:1];

Async Support

The second extension builds on the first and loads your sprite sheets asynchronously instead of blocking the main thread. This has been really handy for the dynamic and predictive loading of textures on our very large maps. When the user scrolls, the framework will load the next few textures into memory. If the textures are loaded synchronously there's a visible jitter in the scrolling of the game. With this extension, that issue is solved.

One thing to note is that every subsequent call to addAsyncMultipack... before the first texture is loaded will yield a separate attempt to load the texture. This is because the internal state of CCSpriteFrameCache isn't modified till after the first texture is loaded in memory. You'll want to incorporate some mechanism for locking if you forsee this becoming an issue. Once the first texture is fully loaded into memory, CCSpriteFrameCache is updated and behaves normally - subsequent calls won't attempt to load the same texture into memory again since it will be detected as a hit in the cache.

- (void)addAsyncMultipackSpriteFramesWithFormat:(NSString *)format ipadhd:(NSUInteger)ipadhdCount hd:(NSUInteger)hdCount standard:(NSUInteger)standardCount withCompletion:(void (^)())completeCallback { NSString *imageFormat = [format stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@".plist" withString:@".pvr.ccz"]; NSUInteger count = [self countFromIpadhd:ipadhdCount hd:hdCount standard:standardCount]; __block NSUInteger loaded = 0; for (NSUInteger i = 0; i < count; i++) { [[CCTextureCache sharedTextureCache] addImageAsync:[NSString stringWithFormat:imageFormat, i] withBlock:^(CCTexture *tex) { [[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] addSpriteFramesWithFile:[NSString stringWithFormat:format, i]]; if (++loaded == count && completeCallback != NULL) { completeCallback(); } }]; } } - (void)addAsyncMultipackSpriteFramesWithFormat:(NSString *)format textureFormat:(NSString *)textureFormat ipadhd:(NSUInteger)ipadhdCount hd:(NSUInteger)hdCount standard:(NSUInteger)standardCount withCompletion:(void (^)())completeCallback { NSUInteger count = [self countFromIpadhd:ipadhdCount hd:hdCount standard:standardCount]; __block NSUInteger loaded = 0; for (NSUInteger i = 0; i < count; i++) { [[CCTextureCache sharedTextureCache] addImageAsync:[NSString stringWithFormat:textureFormat, i] withBlock:^(CCTexture *tex) { [[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] addSpriteFramesWithFile:[NSString stringWithFormat:format, i] textureFilename:[NSString stringWithFormat:textureFormat, i]]; if (++loaded == count && completeCallback != NULL) { completeCallback(); } }]; } }

Andreas Löw of TexturePacker made this video about SpriteSheets and what every Game Developer should know.

According to Andreas Löw:

This is a really big fat update for TexturePacker. I packed 25 new features inside it!

What do you get in detail?

Flash importer

Simply drag your flash files (.swf) onto TexturePacker and it extracts the images and builds a sprite sheet from them! Requires installed Flash Player Plugin. This feature works on Windows & MacOS – Linux is currently not working well.

.pvr and .pvr.ccz QuickLook plugin on MacOS

No need to open TexturePacker to view your .pvr and .pvr.ccz files anymore. TexturePacker now contains a QuickView plugin so you can view the files right from finder!

Save defaults

Many people requested a way to save the default settings so that they don’t have to set exporter and other stuff on restarting. – Here it is! (Pro only)

Ubuntu support

Since many users build for Android I also added support for Linux – currently Ubuntu 10.x. It might still have some quirks (e.g. Flash does not yet work) but is a good start. I decided to build on Ubuntu since it seem to be the most used platform.

New Exporters

I also added a ton of new exporters such as

Moai

AppGameKit

Slick2D

Unity3D / UIToolKit

User interface improvements

I also added a lot of interface improvements to make work with TexturePacker easier.

New layout of the left side panel allowing easier change of exporter

Auto update sprite sheet when re-entering TexturePacker

Sprite highlighting

Reveal in Finder / Explorer

Preferences to change checkerboard color and hightlight color

New icons

Hotkeys

Backspace / delete to remove sprites

Dialog to select the Flash Player plugin to use

Drag your sprites here – to give new users a faster start

Allowing free choice of texture data file name

Fit button for zoom

Folders inside a smart folder are now blue

Auto populate file names from other names e.g. save blah.tps also sets blah.png and blah.plist

Image features

Here are some new image export features. Main function is support for flipped PVRs and RGB888 as output format.

Option to use flipped PVR files

Support for RGB888

Unflip flipped pvrs in viewer

Allow free size for PVR textures (might not work on all targets)

Other stuff

Rotation support for AndEngine

Default padding is now 2 – This effects the command line client!