boniness cogency: iOS 7 preview: Sprite Kit

iOS 7 preview: Sprite Kit

I've written a lot already about how Apple is changing the interface game by making iOS 7 not only objectified but gamified. It almost feels like you play it as much as you use it. The original iPhone's interface required good enough OpenGL support that it eventually birthed a mobile gaming empire. iOS 7's physics and particle engine -- rumored to have been built by a first-class gaming engineer who's work you've likely enjoyed, a lot -- seems poised to take all of this not only to the next level, but to the next generation. The reason for that is as simple as it is spectacular -- Apple's taken a lot of the new stuff behind their physical new interface, and bundled it together for developers as Sprite Kit.

Here's how the public-facing portion of Apple's iOS developer portal describes it:

Create new immersive experiences using the latest game technologies in iOS 7. Develop high-performance 2D games with the powerful new Sprite Kit framework, which combines everything you need to animate sprites, simulate physics and create beautiful particle systems all in one easy-to-use set of APIs. Hand the controls over to your users by adding support for upcoming MFi game controllers to your game. And the re-designed Game Center adds more modes for turn-based games and more leaderboards, as well as allowing you to authenticate players, and securely transmit game scores and achievements.

The public side of the Mac developer portal has similar:

Create high-performing 2D games with the powerful new Sprite Kit framework, which allows you to control sprite attributes such as position, size, rotation, gravity, and mass. Sprite Kit?s OpenGL-based renderer efficiently animates 2D scenes. Built-in support for physics makes animations look real, and particle systems create essential game effects such as fire, explosions, and smoke.

And this bit on Graphics and Animation:

Sprite Kit is a powerful graphics framework for 2D games such as side-scrolling shooters, puzzle games, and platformers. A flexible API lets developers control sprite attributes such as position, size, rotation, gravity, and mass. Sprite Kit?s OpenGL-based renderer efficiently animates 2D scenes. Built-in support for physics makes animations look real, and particle systems create essential game effects such as fire, explosions, and smoke. To assist SpriteKit-based game development, Xcode supports texture atlas creation and includes a particle creator.

It's easy to see what this means for game developers, or people who want to be developers. They get a lot of really good stuff, and they get it "for free". Existing projects can throw away code and let Sprite Kit take its place, and new developers can just include it from the get go, adding effects they might not have been able to do on their own.

What's more, iOS 7 is showing the world that part of next generation interfaces is this objectification and gamification. Making high quality interactions in iOS 6 and older versions sounded tough and tedious, animating more than modeling, and building even a few types really well was really difficult. iOS 7 and technology like Sprite Kit removes that burden. Designers and developers can dream up the perfect interactions for their apps, and Sprite Kit will conceivably help them achieve it.

Sprite Kit isn't a user-facing feature. It's not one of the 10 tentpoles Apple's senior vice-president of software, Craig Federighi, spent any time on during the WWDC 2013 keynote. However, he did show off every delightful ricochet in Notification Center, every bounce in Messages, every flip, every spin, every zoom, every parallax, every pan, and every bit of interactive awesomeness that Sprite Kit, in part, enables.

And that's just what Apple's doing with it. Imagine 3 months post-iOS 7 launch, 6 month, 1 year... It could fundamentally change the nature of the apps we use every day. It's something that could be transformative.

Sprite Kit is available to developers now, and the rest of us will get our first look at the results of it this fall when Apple ships iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. Check out the resources below for more, and let me know -- are you looking forward to getting App Store apps that have the physics and particle effects of iOS 7?