Running different actions on parent and child node - cocos2d-iphone

I'm trying to run a shake action on my gameLayer
The game layer also contains a CCSprite child that is running another action at this time.
When I run my shake action, it runs. However the effect only appears after the sprite has finished its action.
Why does this happen? Also, any solution to make both actions happen without the use of a CCSPawn?
I can run the action on the scene fine (gameLayer is a child of scene)
with the sprite also running its own action.

Related

Changing scenes in Minko

Is there a standard way to change between scenes in Minko? Specifically, I'm imagining each scene as a different level, and when the user completes some task the entire level changes.
I know I could just update all my meshes and whatnot but this feels poor; is there a way I can build a root node for a new scene and then switch the Canvas to using that root node instead (as well as force a rererender, since all the objects will have changed)?
Your second idea is fine. You can create a separate root Node with its own SceneManager sharing the Canvas. Add your new scene to this Node. When you're ready to switch, change the SceneManager you use in the enterFrame signal to render. This should trigger a re-render, upload textures, calls component added signals...
In Minko, there is no global singleton or anything that would prevent from having to completely separate scenes. Each SceneManager will reference its own AssetLibrary. This way, if you switch scenes and remove references to the previous SceneManager, the assets will be released from memory.

Qt5 QOpenglWidget How can I ensure the scene is updated immediately during mousemove envent?

I am currently working on a simple CAD-like drawing program using Qt and openGL.
What I am doing is that I maintain a list of objects which is on the canvas. The paintGL() function is just loop through the list and render the objects one by one.
objects are fed to the list via slot drawObject(Object obj), in which there is an update() function to schedule an update event to update the scene.
Now, I want to do some rubberband drawing of lines:
After pick one endpoint of the line, whenever I move the cursor, a mouseMoveEvent() is triggered and it will generate an object for the line and emit a signal to drawObject(Object) slot. what the slot does is to erase the old line by doing xor drawing, and draw the new line in xor mode as well.
What I expect to happen is that every time the mouse is Moved, a new object is rendered to the scene. However, it is not. For example, if I move the mouse
fast, then before the update() function actually update the scene, multiple mouseMove events has been triggered and it seems that these events are never been handled, i.e., the correspondence objects never goes to screen. What the program actually does is that a lot of random artifacts is left on the screen after a fast rubberband dragging.
It seems that this is due to the fact that what update() function of QOpenGLWidget does is that it generate an event to inform the widget to redraw later for performance purpose.
During the course of me writing this question, I discovered the repaint() function which do an immediate update. However, the lagging is quite significant: when I move the mouse fast, the rubberband line is not following.
So, my question is, how to implement the rubberband drawing so that it could take advantage of the update() machanism to boost the performance while not having those glitches on the screen?
I have searching around on this but I could find a single article talking about this fast-moving mouse stuff.
Thank you in advance!

Replacing one long CCMoveTo to multiple CCMoveTo with update Cocos2D

Currently, I have a game where an object determines a point to go to. It then calculates a path to that point and constructs one long CCMoveTo animation to get to that point. With this method, the animation seems very smooth and continuous.
I am now trying to break this one long CCMoveTo to multiple CCMoveTo leveraging the update method that gets called periodically. I want to do this because at each node of the path that the objects passes through, there might be a distraction and I want my object to be able to act on that. So this is what I am doing:
- (void) update: (ccTime) dt
{
if(![self isWalking]){
CGPoint nextNode = [_path objectAtIndex:(_currentPathIndex%[_path count])];
_currentPathIndex++;
NSMutableArray *actions = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
[actions addObject:[CCCallBlockO actionWithBlock:^void(id obj) {
[(Monkey *) obj setIsWalking:NO];
} object:self]];
[self moveTo: nextNode withCallbacks: actions];
}
}
Note: that I set isWalking to NO as a callback when the object has completely reached the destination node. This will let it calculate the next node to go to and construct that animation. Without this, the object would try to runAction in the middle of an ongoing CCMoveTo action. The problem with this method is that the movement does not seem smooth and continuous anymore. There seems to be a lag at the end of each CCMoveTo animation
Anybody has any clue on how to fix this?
That's a side effect of cocos2d's CCAction system respectively the CCScheduler.
There will always be a 1-frame delay because when an action stops, it won't do any work in the current frame: it made the last position update in the previous frame, and in the current frame it does no longer exist as a running action.
If you now run another move action in a scheduled method, that action won't begin updating until the next frame because it will schedule itself to receive updates. And updates that are scheduled while cocos2d's CCScheduler performs updates will not be run until the next frame, due to the fact that you can't modify an array during enumeration.
My advise is always to avoid using CCMove* actions for gameplay purposes, and instead manually update position of game objects. It's easy enough to do, and if you need a code example, look inside the CCMoveTo class.
A workaround would be to extend the distance of the CCMoveTo and replace the action shortly before it completes. Though that'll be a hack and may actually be harder to implement correctly than manual position updates.
PS: That's an issue I have addressed in the action model of KoboldTouch. It implements its own action system, with more lightweight and reusable actions.

Does replaceScene replace only the current scene or does it replace all scenes in Cocos2d

I have a game in Cocos2d with a main scene (game scene) and a button to go to a "Configuration" scene. When the user clicks on the Configuration button in the main scene I use pushScene to go tho the "Configuration" scene. The reason I use pushScene is to allow the user to resume the game where he was left off.
In the "Configuration" scene there are two options: "Cancel" and "Ok". If the user hits "Cancel" I use popScene and the game resumes where it was left of. If the user hits "Ok" I use replaceScene because I want the game to start from the beginning with the new configuration.
So, when the user hits "Ok" I know that the "Configuration" scene is replaced by the new game scene, but does the old game scene gets replaced too? Otherwise, am I doing things correctly or should I implement another way to let the game scene know whether it should resume or restart.
I want to make sure I am not leaking memory by accumulating unreplaced scenes.
The replaceScene method does what it says. It replaces the current scene. If you have 10 scenes pushed onto one another, it will replace the 10th scene and all previous scenes remain.
It's one of the reasons why I don't recommend using pushScene. It's too easy to forget a situation where scenes might get pushed more than they get popped. The other reason is that popScene can't be animated with a transition.
Btw, you can easily test this behavior if you do replaceScene after pushScene, then popScene in the newly replaced scene. You'll see the old scene popping up. Normally if you popScene with just a single scene in the stack it'll throw an assertion.

How To Retrieve Actions From Sprite In cocos2d

I have a CCSprite that I'm using in a scene and have created multiple CCAnimation actions to apply to it all using a single CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache. While everything is working and I'm able to switch between animations, I feel like I'm doing poorly and would like to simplify my code by retrieving the running action(s) on the CCSprite to stop them individually before running the next action on it.
To help create some context, lets assume the following situation:
We have a CCSprite called mySprite
We have 3 separate CCAnimation actions defined for walking to the right, walking to the left, and sitting looking forward called: actionAnimWalkRight, actionAnimWalkLeft, and actionAnimSitForward respectively.
We want to have the sprite walk to the right when someone touches the screen right of mySprite, walk left when someone touches the screen left of mySprite and sit when someone touches mySprite.
The approach I'm using to accomplish this is as follows:
Place CCSprite as a child in the scene.
Tell the sprite to run an action using: [self runAction:actionWalkRight];
When I want to change the action after someone touches, I have a method called stopAllAnimationActions which I call before I apply a new action that stops any animation action no matter what's running. Basically lists ALL the CCAnimation/CCActions I have defined and stops each one individually since I don't want to use stopAllActions. as follows: [self stopAction:actionWalkRight]; [self stopAction:actionWalkLeft]; [self stopAction:actionSitForward];
Then I apply the new animation after the above method fires using: [self runAction:actionWalkLeft];
While this works, it just seems like a poor design to stop items that I know aren't running just because I don't know exactly what is running. So just looking for advice and the best recommended practice to do something like this within very complex situations so tracking every possible situation is difficult. Any feedback would be appreciated.
When creating the actions set the tag of that action with a constant:
actionWalkRight.tag= kCurrentAction;
[self runAction:actionWalkRight];
Then, retrieve the running action by that tag and stop it.
[self stopActionByTag:kCurrentAction];
I recommend you simplify your process and take advantage of the native Cocos features, including stopAllActions. Don't re-use actions, always create them from scratch as it has been well discussed among Cocos developers that re-using actions can be buggy.
Cocos is well optimized and features like stopAllActions are not performance hogs. It would probably be faster than your approach, actually.