Cocos2D : CCSpriteBatchNode & TexturePacker

Every time a texture is drawn on the screen, the graphics hardware has to prepare the rendering, render the graphics, and clean up after rendering. There is an inherent overhead caused by starting and ending the rendering of a single texture. This can be alleviated by asking the graphics hardware to render an entire group of sprites. In that case, the graphics hardware will perform the preparation and cleanup steps only once for that group of sprites.

Cocos2D : What is it ?

As long as you create simple applications, and by simple i mean without 3D and without framerates and real-time concerns, UIKit is the framework to use. It contains a lot of components, with great APIs and a full documentation. It is very pleasant to work with it. But as soon as you want to have fun making a game, you have to start working with the appropriate framework. That's what lead us to Cocos2D.

Cocos2D is a free, open-source, community supported and easy to use, while efficient, smartphone game engine.

AppDays #1

La conférence AppDays, conférence dédiée aux applications mobiles, a eu lieu le vendredi 9 novembre à Paris. Cette première édition a été un large succès puisque plus de 200 personnes étaient là pour écouter les 15 présentations, et presque 1500 tweets ont été émis avec le hashtag #appdays. Les organisateurs prévoient déjà la seconde édition.

Key-Value Coding

Key-Value Coding is a way to access an object's property indirectly. Rather than using an accessor, you'll be able to use a string to identify a property. From that simple idea, you will get a powerful mechanism, allowing, for instance, observing, binding, collection operators etc.

Category to override methods

If you regularly take a look at some forums, you may have encountered some Categories that are used to override existing methods. Especially currently with the new orientations' methods and the UINavigationController issue (see my article about that). In practice, override a method in a category seems to work well, but that's a very bad idea. This article will try to explain why.

Orientation since iOS 6

Handle orientation in iOS applications was a well known operation prior to iOS 6.

Now the method shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: is deprecated, and few new methods appeared. How does it work now ?

CocoaHeads in Rennes

As you maybe know, i'm a CocoaHeads speaker and organizer in Rennes.
If you don't know, CocoaHeads is a worldwide group, devoted to discussion of Apple's Cocoa framework, that offer tutorials during monthly meetings.

Here is a list of previous sessions in Rennes: