How do I stop Cocos2D from requiring standard definition resources (SD images)? - objective-c

I am developing an iPhone game with Cocos2d-iphone.
I want my game to only be available to the iPhone 4 AND iPad. Retina enabled for iPhone 4. I don't want the game to run on older devices.
Cocos2d will always ask me for -hd and non-hd files. If I don't provide the SD files, I get errors. I don't want that: is there a way to disable Cocos2d from trying to retrieve SD files, and only get -hd suffixed files by default?
Oh, and when the game is run by an iPad, the graphics will be the -hd ones as well. So the point is, I only want to have -hd files in my project.
What are the proper steps to edit Cocos2d's source for such?

If you are using cocos2d version >= 2.0, then you can change the value of a global variable found in CCFileUtils.h:
static NSString *__suffixiPad =#"-hd";
(Its default value is #"-ipad".)
If you are using cocos2d version < 2.0, then you can find here a category that I wrote to be able to transparently use -hd images created for the iPhone 4 on the iPad 1/2.
Actually, it does more than that, but if you add it to your project, then "-hd" images will be "automagically" used on the iPad 1/2 instead of their SD versions (which you could also not include in your project).
Let me know if you have any issues integrating this code.

If I would have been at your place.. I would have played with a trick.. Don't down vote the answer if you don't like.. But Its just a thing in my mind.
Use -hd images in the code directly.. iPhone 4 will handle it easily.. Older iPhones will show it much larger and it doesn't matter as you are not supporting them...
So instead of using Background.png , directly use Background-hd.png as it will work fine for iPhone 4.. Instead of wasting time on all these SD stuff.. I will directly use my -hd images for my work...
I can not say about new iPad.. But old iPad can easily use -hd images in code as you want.. For iPad I have directly used in my code earlier..
Hope this helps.. :)

This tutorial might help.
If you only provide -hd assets, you should only get errors regarding missing SD assets when running on iPad. The iPad doesn't have a Retina display, but it certainly is high resolution enough to be treated like one.
Since cocos2d passes all filename requests through the fullPathFromRelativePath function in CCFileUtils it may be enough to modify this function to treat the iPad like an HD device and force it to load -hd assets on iPad.

the 1st idea i can think of is to use #2x suffix for images (UIKit style) and you wont need to enable retina display in app.The problem is that on the ipad you'll have to write your own method to remove #2x suffix
the 2nd idea was to make a SD image..but only 1x1 pixels... it takes virtually no space at all ( 119 bytes with white pixel). Should work on ipad as-is
3rd idea:don't enable (or enable..doesn't make any difference) retina display but have the HD images as SD images.I've tested this on cocos2d v1.0.1 and it seems to work.Also..it should work on ipad
4th idea forcefully enable retina display in ccConfig.h (so that director won't ask you for the SD images on ipad) .I'm not sure about this one because there are quite a few tests that check for resolution, device and if it's retina and you'd have to edit all of them
these are just ideas off the top of my head..they may be wrong..but they're just ideas

Related

SKSpriteNodes are showing up different sizes on a real iPhone

I am making an app, and recently, out of the blue there has been a problem.
When I ran my app on my iPhone, (which I have been doing fine for the last few weeks) the images show up at completely different sizes.
For example:
The start button on the Xcode simulator is xScale 2.0f. On the iPhone it shows to be roughly half that size. I keep all the images in a .atlas file, and they are all .png. I am using sprite kit as well, and the iPhone I am using is on iOS 7.
Here is what I'm getting:
Unwanted result (As is on iPhone)
Here is what I would like:
Desired Result (As is on simulator)
This has also happened throughout the app, with other sprite nodes. Does anyone know how I can fix this problem? Thank you in advance, and I would have posted screenshots if it wasn't for the 10 rep limit.
Edit:
I have now got most of the images working, by creating a #2x version of all the images.
But there is still one graphic that is this time TOO LARGE on the iPhone. Thank you for all your help so far, does anyone know how I can make that one image smaller on the iPhone?
Your PNGs need to be labeled with a 2x or 3x. This is Apples way of accounting for the retina screens.
"ImageFileName#2x.png"
for Iphone 4,5,6
"ImageFileName#3x.png"
for Iphone 6 Plus
If you have no extension, Apple will assume it should make your image 2 or 3 times bigger to account for the extra pixels in the retina displays. If you add the #2x or #3x, Apple assumes you provided the image already accounting for the retina pixel count.

Retina graphics vs non-retina graphics management

I am about to launch a new app and would lik eto increase quality of the graphics. In my case the graphics is the logo and the custom buttons. I do not know if this impact Core Plot but that is also part of the package.
There is quite a few posts about this but there are still things i do not fully understand.
I am reading this quote from "amattn":
It's trivial:
1.Only include #2x images in your project.
2.Make sure those images have the #2x suffix.
The system will automatically downscale for non-retina devices.
The only exception is if you are doing manual, low level Core Graphics drawing.
You need to adjust the scale if so. 99.9% though, you don't have to worry about this.
From this post: Automatic resizing for 'non-retina' image versions
My question in regards to this is:
1. Should i do the testing on retina simulator only, as if i place a #2 grapic on
non-retina it will be too big? ...or is there an other way of doing it?
2. Should i always use a ImageView or is it OK to drag the image on the screen,
this is the logo i am talking about?
3. What about custom made buttons with images, how should i do with those?
4. What is the normal process to manage the different screen sizes, do people
add images for all displays or using this type of process?
Should i do the testing on retina simulator only, as if i place a #2 grapic on non-retina it will be too big? ...or is there an other
way of doing it?
It doesn't really matter which simulator you test on because as long as your non-retina and retina graphics are named correctly (image and image#2x) the correct image will be displayed automatically.
Should i always use a ImageView or is it OK to drag the image on the screen, this is the logo i am talking about?
When you drag and image from the project directly onto a view in interface builder you don't really see it happen but it has automatically created and image view which is containing the image your dropped in.
What about custom made buttons with images, how should i do with those?
[myButton setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"myFileName"]];
As shown in the above code you should always use the non-retina fle name when you reference the image a UI element should use. That was if iOS detects the device is retina it can automatically use the #2x version in its place.
What is the normal process to manage the different screen sizes, do people add images for all displays or using this type of process?
Yes, including multiple image resolutions common practice and is required for iPhone apps (not sure about iPad) to include both retina and non-retina images. But regardless of the requirements, you should definitely support both device resolutions to keep your customers happy!

Can iPad2 use images of resolution 2048 x 1536 with no aesthetic problems?

I am developing an iOS application for iPad. Currently I am using images of resolution 2048×1536 px (iPad3 resolution). If I run this app on iPad2 or iPad1 will it get fitted to its resolution (1024×768 px)? Or should I use a 1024×768 images and specify image#2x for iPad3?
Since I only have iPad3 , cannot know how the images will be seen in the lower resolution devices. But it should work perfectly on them too.
Any help greatly appreciated. Please cite your sources.
You could try this in the simulator if you don't have a non-retina device.
It's certainly possible and will usually look fine (at least for photos, text and icons may look worse when scaled down), but you are wasting quite a lot of memory which is pretty scarce on an iPad 1 (it only has 256 MB), so you should usually also include non-retina images.
Automatically scaling down images typically results in visual artifacts, which is why the SDK includes an easy way to include different versions of any image, instead of just a single big one.
As far as I know, all iOS devices (within the same family) have resolutions that are multiples of each other so automatic scaling artifacts are somewhat mitigated, but it is still best to include the correct resolution.

what is image size(resolution) for iPad 3 application development?

As we know iPad 3 have 2048×1536 resolution.
for iPhone 4 with retina display we put big image with name #2X and one normal image in our bundle.
so for iPad 3 application development we also need to put two images one is normal size and other with big size with #2X name..?
Any one know please reply.
With the iPad 3, you also simply need to name your retina images foo#2x.png. It needs to be exactly two times the resolution of the corresponding foo.png. So, say foo.png is 10x10, then your foo#2x.png needs to be 20x20.
You can also make version specifically for iPhone/iPod or iPad and iOS will automatically chose the correct version. For this, you can use the ~iphone and ~ipad modifiers:
foo.png for all devices with non-retina display
foo~iphone.png specifically for iPhone/iPod non-retina
foo~ipad.png specifically for iPad non-retina
foo#2x.png for all devices with retina display
foo#2x~iphone.png specifically for iPhone/iPad retina
foo#2x~ipad.png specifically for iPad retina
You can mix them in any combination, as long as there's always a version for all your supported devices (if you're doing an iPad-only app there's no need to provide images for iPhone, of course). So it's OK to provide for example foo~iphone.png, foo~ipad.png and then foo#2x.png.
I think it would be "image~ipad" & "image#2x~ipad" for iPad with Retina Display if you are writing a Universal app (since "image" & "image#2x" are for iPhone/iPod images).
Otherwise I guess "image" & "image#2x" is OK.
Refer to How to support both iPad and iPhone retina graphics in universal apps .

Managing resources in a universal ios app

I am developing a cocos2d game. I need to make it universal. Problem is that I want to use minimun amount of images to keep the universal binary as small as possible. Is there any possibility that I can use same images I am using for iphone, retina and iPad somehow? If yes, how can I do that? What image size and quality should it be? Any suggestion?
Thanks and Best regards
As for suggestions: provide HD resolution images for Retina devices and iPad, provide SD resolution images for non-Retina devices. Don't think about an all-in-one solution - there isn't one that's acceptable.
Don't upscale SD images to HD resolution on Retina devices or iPad. It won't look any better.
Don't downscale HD images for non-Retina devices. Your textures will still use 4x the memory on devices that have half or even a quarter of the memory available. In addition, downscaling images is bad for performance because it has to be done by the CPU on older devices. While you could downscale the image and save the downscaled texture, it adds a lot more complexity to your code and will increase the loading time.
There's not a single right answer to this question. One way to do it is to create images that are larger than you need and then scale them down. If the images don't have a lot of fine detail, that should work pretty well. As an example, this is the reason that you submit a 512x512 pixel image of your app icon along with your app to the App Store. Apple never displays the image at that size, but uses it to create a variety of smaller sizes for display in the App Store.
Another approach is to use vector images, which you can draw perfectly at any size that you need. Unfortunately, the only vector format that I can think of that's supported in iOS is PDF.