Constraining proportions of GUI elements in Spritekit game

Question

I apologize in advance because of huge post, but everybody who ever tried to mak

Answer 1

Your main issues seem to be handling the various screen sizes in relation to your image assets and screen object coordinates.

My solution is to write your code as if you are coding for the iPhone 6 plus. Make all your images @3x size and your screen layout coordinates for the iPhone 6 screen size.

With just a bit of code I was able to get an uniform layout for the iPhone 6 plus, 6, 5 and 4 screen sizes. I have included screen shots for each one. The character image is 300x300. The 2 button images are 100x100.

static const float kIphone6PlusScaleFactorX = 1.0;
static const float kIphone6PlusScaleFactorY = 1.0;
static const float kIphone6ScaleFactorX = 0.9;
static const float kIphone6ScaleFactorY = 0.9;
static const float kIphone5ScaleFactorX = 0.772;
static const float kIphone5ScaleFactorY = 0.772;
static const float kIphone4ScaleFactorX = 0.772;
static const float kIphone4ScaleFactorY = 0.652;

#import "GameScene.h"

@implementation GameScene {
    float scaleFactorX;
    float scaleFactorY;

    SKSpriteNode *node0;
    SKSpriteNode *node1;
    SKSpriteNode *node2;
    SKLabelNode *label0;
}

-(void)didMoveToView:(SKView *)view {
self.backgroundColor = [SKColor blackColor];

    if(view.frame.size.height == 736) {
        NSLog(@"iPhone 6 plus");
        scaleFactorX = kIphone6PlusScaleFactorX;
        scaleFactorY = kIphone6PlusScaleFactorY;
    }
    if(view.frame.size.height == 667) {
        NSLog(@"iPhone 6");
        scaleFactorX = kIphone6ScaleFactorX;
        scaleFactorY = kIphone6ScaleFactorY;
    }
    if(view.frame.size.height == 568) {
        NSLog(@"iPhone 5");
        scaleFactorX = kIphone5ScaleFactorX;
        scaleFactorY = kIphone5ScaleFactorY;
    }
    if(view.frame.size.height == 480) {
        NSLog(@"iPhone 4");
        scaleFactorX = kIphone4ScaleFactorX;
        scaleFactorY = kIphone4ScaleFactorY;
    }

    node0 = [SKSpriteNode spriteNodeWithImageNamed:@"Pic"];
    node0.position = CGPointMake(self.size.width/2, self.size.height/2);
    [node0 setScale:scaleFactorX];
    [self addChild:node0];

    node1 = [SKSpriteNode spriteNodeWithImageNamed:@"button0"];
    node1.position = CGPointMake(100*scaleFactorX, 100*scaleFactorY);
    [node1 setScale:scaleFactorX];
    [self addChild:node1];

    node2 = [SKSpriteNode spriteNodeWithImageNamed:@"button1"];
    node2.position = CGPointMake(314*scaleFactorX, 100*scaleFactorY);
    [node2 setScale:scaleFactorX];
    [self addChild:node2];

    label0 = [SKLabelNode labelNodeWithFontNamed:@"HelveticaNeue-Bold"];
    label0.text = @"Big Game Menu";
    label0.fontSize = 48*scaleFactorX;
    label0.fontColor = [SKColor whiteColor];
    label0.horizontalAlignmentMode = SKLabelHorizontalAlignmentModeCenter;
    label0.verticalAlignmentMode = SKLabelVerticalAlignmentModeCenter;
    label0.position = CGPointMake(207*scaleFactorX,690*scaleFactorY);
    [self addChild:label0];
}

iPhone 4

iPhone 5

iPhone 6

iPhone 6+

Notice how even the text label is scaled down correctly not just by font size but also location.

For your reference, I did use the standard code in my GameViewController because I find it easier to work with a simpler version. This is the code I used to present my SKView:

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];

    SKView * skView = (SKView *)self.view;
    SKScene *scene = [GameScene sceneWithSize:skView.bounds.size];
    scene.scaleMode = SKSceneScaleModeAspectFill;
    [skView presentScene:scene];
}