Sprite Kit animateWithTextures lags

Question

I'm using texture atlases in my Sprite Kit game. I'm creating SKTextureAtlas object and store it's textures in array for each animation. So when I need some animation on my hero I call animateWithTextures sending it the corresponding array. There are some lags when I start animations. Is there some way to start animation smoothly?

Answer 1

had the same problem and I solved it in my game by not using atlases. So try this example:

-(void)makePlayerAnimation:(SKSpriteNode *)player
{
SKTexture *texture1 = [SKTexture textureWithImageNamed:@"texture1.png"];
SKTexture *texture2 = [SKTexture textureWithImageNamed:@"texture2.png"];
SKTexture *texture3 = [SKTexture textureWithImageNamed:@"texture3.png"];


SKAction *animationTextures = [SKAction animateWithTextures:@[texture1, texture2, texture3] timePerFrame:0.1];


[player runAction:animationTextures];
}

When you wish to activate animation do this:

[self makePlayerAnimation:myNode];

or

[self makePlayerAnimation:self.myNode];

Just depends how you declared it. If you need to run animation forever, you can just add line at the end of previous method:

SKAction *repeat = [SKAction repeatActionForever: animationTextures];

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I am sure there are few ways to get around this. What you need to do is to preload an atlases before your gameplay actually start. Just show a loading screen at the beginning of the game and preload your atlases.

You may try with + preloadTextureAtlases:withCompletionHandler:

[SKTextureAtlas preloadTextureAtlases:textureAtlasesArray withCompletionHandler:^{ /*Game Start*/}];

Another way to implement resource loading before everything else (and keep everything in memory) is described here in Adventure game example

For more details about loading assets asynchronously take a peek into code which can be downloaded from the link above.