Sprite button and icon hover animation - objective-c

Question

I'm trying to create an effect over my custom buttons (SKSpriteNodes) and other UI objects that are also SKSpriteNode subclasses so that when the mouse hovers over them, they expand slightly to indicate that the user is hovering over them. Once the mouse leaves the vicinity of the sprite, the sprite should go back to normal size.
I initially tried this with the mouseMoved method, but undoing the scaling effect is proving to be an issue. Is there a better way to handle this maybe in the subclasses themselves? Ideas?

Answer 1

One way to do this is to simply keep track of the currently hovered node (if any). Something like this.
I've added a method to recursively search a nodes parents to try and find a suitable hoverable parent. SKSpriteNode in my example, but Producer in your case unless I'm mistaken.
class GameScene: SKScene {
var hoverNode: SKSpriteNode?
//Setup
override func mouseMoved(theEvent: NSEvent) {
let location = theEvent.locationInNode(self)
if let node = findHoverable(self.nodeAtPoint(location)) {
if (node == hoverNode) { return }
node.removeAllActions()
node.runAction(SKAction.scaleTo(1.2, duration: 0.5))
hoverNode = node
} else {
if let hoverNode = hoverNode {
hoverNode.removeAllActions()
hoverNode.runAction(SKAction.scaleTo(1.0, duration: 0.5))
self.hoverNode = nil
}
}
}
private func findHoverable(node: SKNode) -> SKSpriteNode? {
if let node = node as? SKSpriteNode {
return node
}
if let parent = node.parent {
if let parent = parent as? SKSpriteNode {
return parent
} else {
return findHoverable(parent)
}
} else {
return nil
}
}
}