When creating a level we randomly select fruit for a tile. This “randomness” causes matches to pre-exist in a level when presented to a player. This would reduce the challenge of the puzzle and should not be the case. We can easily eliminate these match chains by updating the Level class. Continue reading →

In order to provide a visual cue to the player the selected swiped fruit should be highlighted momentarily in order to indicate which fruit the player is about to swap. This selection highlighting animation can be achieved by temporarily placing a highlighted version of the sprite on top of the current sprite and having it along for the ride in the swap animation and eventually fading out. Continue reading →

Having completed the swipe to swap it was time to update the model and animate the swap. This involved creating a new Swap struct. In Swift the struct is a value type versus a class which is a reference type. Here it makes sense to use a struct since the swap is inert and only stores data. The logic of handling the swap is not done by the swap itself. The detection of the swap is handled in the Game Scene and the real game logic is in the Game View Controller. Continue reading →

The essence of the match-three game is to move fruits such that three fruits of the same type match up. This move is done with a swipe. The Game Scene is the best place for implementing the detection of the player’s swipes that will reposition the fruits into this match pattern. The reposition is called the swap. Recognizing these swipes to swap in SpriteKit is best done with the touchesBegan, touchesMoved, and touchesEnded functions.  Continue reading →