cocos2d sub-classing - objective-c

Question

I know that cocos2d has scheduling callbacks to do nice things but when you need to use one CCAction (like CCMoveTo one) in order to move a sprite from position a to b, you do not have the ability to make small position arrangements to the sprite position for as long as the action is in effect.
The only possible way I found is by making a sub-class of CCMoveTo in order to check for obstacles and therefore provide some kind of movement to the left or right to a sprite that was moving from top to the bottom of the iPhone screen. The problem is that the sub-class does not have access to the parent class' instance variables (like the startPosition_ one) because they have not been declared as properties.
So I used the following snippet to overcome this situation but I wonder if I am doing something wrong...
- (void)myUpdate:(ccTime)time {
if(delegate && method_) {
NSNumber *num = (NSNumber *)[delegate performSelector:method_ withObject:ownTarget];
if(num) {
double xpos = [num doubleValue];
[num release];
CCMoveTo *parent = [super retain];
parent->startPosition_.x += xpos;
[parent release];
}
[super update:time];
}
Is it correct to retain/release the super-class? The "[super update:time];" at the bottom of the code will make the final positioning.

Answer 1

CCMoveTo *parent = [super retain];
Ouch! This statement makes absolutely no sense. It is the same as writing:
[self retain];
As for accessing the super class' instance variables: unless they're declared #private you can access them. I just checked: they're not #private. You should be able to write in your subclass:
startPosition_.x += xpos;
If that doesn't work make sure your class is really a subclass of CCMoveTo, and not some other class.
Finally, I'd like to say that actions are very limited when it comes to implementing gameplay. You're probably much better off to simply animate your game objects by modifying their position property every frame, based on a velocity vector. You have much more freedom over the position and position updates, and none of the side effects of actions such as a one-frame delay every time you run a new action.
-(void) update:(ccTime)delta
{
// modify velocity based on whatever you need, ie gravity, or just heading in one direction
// then update the node's position by adding the current velocity to move it:
self.position = CGPointMake(self.position.x + velocity.x, self.position.y + velocity.y);
}