CCSpriteBatchNode to animate single sprite - cocos2d-iphone

As far as I understand, CCSpriteBatchNode's role is to optimize rendering of many children by reducing the number of OpenGL instructions (if they all use the same spritesheet).
But I saw in the Cocos2D animation guide that CCSpriteBatchNode is used to animate a single sprite...
I'm a bit confused. Is there any benefit to use CCSpriteBatchNode to animate one single CCSprite? And why?

In short, no. If you only have a single sprite on screen using a CCSpriteBatchNode is counterproductive, whether the sprite is animated or not.

Related

Draw texture on finger movement in Cocos2dx

I want to create an app in Cocos2d/Cocos2dx in which i have an image which is not visible but when i move my finger on device it start drawing. Only that part of image draws where i move my finger.
Thanks in Advance
There are two ways I can think of drawing an image.
The first way would be like a brush. You would use RenderTexture and draw/visit a brush sprite to draw it into this texture. If you just need to draw with solid colors (can have opacity) you could also use the primitive draw commands (drawCircle, drawPoly, drawSegment). You will need a high rate of touch tracking and will likely want to draw segments or bezier curves between touch movements to catch fast movements.
http://discuss.cocos2d-x.org/t/using-rendertexture-to-render-one-sprite-multiple-times/16332/3
http://discuss.cocos2d-x.org/t/freehand-drawing-app-with-cocos2d-x-v3-3-using-rendertexture/17567/9
Searching on how other drawing games work would be useful.
The second way I can envision it is similar to revealing except using an inverse mask. So you would draw a set image, but reveal that image by drawing.
http://www.raywenderlich.com/4428/how-to-mask-a-sprite-with-cocos2d-2-0
There are more elaborate ways to handle the drawing into the RenderTexture in order to have the brush design tile correctly and repeat based on a given size, but that'll involve making something closer to an image editing tool.

animating a model without redrawing the whole background drawing --OPENGL

Using OPENGL , I am making a simple animation where a small triangle will move through the path that I have created with mouse (glutMotionFunc).
So the problem is how can I animate a small triangle without redrawing the whole path using glutSwapBuffers();
And also ,how can I rotate that triangle only.
I don't want to use overlay as switching between these 2 layers takes much time.
If redrawing the whole path is really too expensive, you can do your rendering to an off-screen framebuffer. The mechanism to do this with OpenGL is called Frame Buffer Object (FBO)
Explaining how to use FBOs in detail is beyond the scope of an answer here, but you should be able to find tutorials. You will be using functions like:
glGenFramebuffers()
glBindFramebuffer()
glFramebufferRenderbuffer() or glFramebufferTexture()
This way, you can draw just the additional triangle to your FBO whenever a new triangle is added. To show your rendering on screen, you can copy the current content of the FBO to the primary framebuffer using glBlitFramebuffer().
You cant! Because it just does not makes sense!
The way computer screen work is the same as in films: fps! Frames per second. There is no thing as "animation" in screens, it is just a fast series of static images, but as our eyes cannot see things moving fast, it looks like it is moving.
This means that every time something changes in the thing you want to draw, you need to create a new "static image" of that stage, and that is done with all the glVertex and so pieces of code. Once you finish drawing you want to put it on the screen, so you swap your buffer.

Cocos2D Deform object

I'm new to cocos2D, and I wanna add an object that can be deformed when i touch it, can I do that on a CCSprite ? if yes, can anybody tell me how ? thanks.
You can skew a CCSprite with the CCSkewTo/CCSkewBy actions. Combine that with rotation and scaling that's about the most deformation you can get without getting hardcore on render textures, polygon tesselation or shader programming.
Don't think you can do that on a CCSprite.

Role of CCSpriteBatchNode

The idea behind a CCSpriteBatchNode is to render a texture once for many sprites which should improve performance instead of treating each sprite as a different texture.
However, I'm confused how there is a benefit to using this as opposed to using only a single texture atlas. If you create a texture with this:
[[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] addSpriteFramesWithFile:#"gameTexture.plist"];
and then every single image you use for sprites is pulled using frame methods, then aren't all your images using the same single rendered texture, even though a batch node was never introduced?
Of course, you can use a batchnode in combination with a texture atlas, but how is this an actual gain in performance? If you do not use a batchnode, is it rendering the texture multiple times, even though it is cached?
using the same texture you are not changing texture at each call, but you still are rendering all the sprite in different glBegin and Ends, using the CCSpriteBatchNode will make sure that every sprite in it is rendered within the same call
The performance improvement simple comes from the reduced number of OpenGL calls. If you don't use a SpriteBatchNode, your sprites will come from one texture yes but they will all make seperate OpenGL calls. The batch node object contains code to collect all of it's children and make just a single call, this is why your sprites must be a child of the same batch node to get the performance boost.
0 batch node + 100 sprites = 100 OpenGL calls.
1 batch node + 100 sprites (children of this batch node) = 1 OpenGL call.
If you're really interested have a look in CCSpriteBatchNode.m

2d Light effect with SDL

i would like to create a light effect on a 2d car racing written in SDL.NET (and c#).
The psychs Light effect is simple: the car headlights (classic conic light effect).
Does somebody know where can i look for some example of light managemnt via SDL ? Or maybe tell me how to solve this issue ?
Thank you for your support !
Update: actually i've created an image with gimp with a simulation of light.
Then i load it in front of my car sprite to simulate the light.
But i don't like this type of approach... maybe is more efficient than a run-time generation/simulation of a light!
If you're looking at pure 2D solutions, you just want to attach the headlights sprite to your car sprite. There is no "light management" here. Just an alpha-blended sprite.
To improve the effect, you might want to create and use two sprites actually:
one small, directed for the conic headlight effect
one much bigger, haloish, to increase lighting in front of the car on a large area.
Note: you might do the second without images, if you can create an alpha-blended primitive in SDL of the proper shape.
If you need a realistic lighting model you have to change to opengl or directx and use a shader like deferred lighting. This is an example for xna.
How about using multiple images instead?
Since SDL doesn't have shader effects, I would suggest breaking the conical image into small parts depending on the detail you want, and collision checking with the objects in front of the image and drawing only the parts required.
It's a hack, but it can look good if you divide the "glow" images both vertically and horizontally.