Sprite kit sprites loading performance improvement

Question

I am making a sprite kit game and I am using the plist file to set properties of each level. One of the properties in my plist file is a dictionary called patterns, which co

Answer 1

I have had the same problem! The issue is in this line...

let element = SKSpriteNode(imageNamed: "obsticle1")

SpriteKit isn't smart enough to know that a texture was already created with that image. So what it is doing is creating that texture over and over again and that is expensive.

Instead create a texture outside of the loop first and then create the sprite node with a texture. Something like this...

let elementTexture = SKTexture(imageNamed: "objstical1")

for i in 0...300 {

    let element = SKSpriteNode(texture: elementTexture)
    element.hidden = true
    obsticle1Pool.append(element)

}

Not only will this be a ton faster it will decrease your apps memory a ton...assuming it was the same issue I was having. Hopefully that helps.