Building a chess board game in Sprite Kit using Swift? [closed]

Question

In Sprite Kit using Swift, I am trying to build a chess board (in actuality, a chess-like board / tile grid). So in general, how should I go about creating a square grid board?

I have done a lot of research and have studied some examples of the high-level concept of chess-like boards through multi-dimensional arrays but it still doesn't really explain how to VISUALLY represent it in Sprite Kit and more importantly, how to map the visual representation to the letter+number representation in a multi-dimensional array...

Any thoughts?

If anyone could answer at least one point/part in the above question, it would be greatly appreciated! Big thank you in advanced!

Answer 1

One way to draw a chessboard in SpriteKit is to add alternating white and black sprite nodes at the appropriate locations. Here's an example of how to do that.

    override func didMoveToView(view: SKView) {
        self.scaleMode = .ResizeFill

        // Draw the board
        drawBoard()
        // Add a game piece to the board
        if let square = squareWithName("b7") {
            let gamePiece = SKSpriteNode(imageNamed: "Spaceship")
            gamePiece.size = CGSizeMake(24, 24)
            square.addChild(gamePiece)
        }
        if let square = squareWithName("e3") {
            let gamePiece = SKSpriteNode(imageNamed: "Spaceship")
            gamePiece.size = CGSizeMake(24, 24)
            square.addChild(gamePiece)
        }
    }

This method draws the chessboard.

    func drawBoard() {
        // Board parameters
        let numRows = 8
        let numCols = 8
        let squareSize = CGSizeMake(32, 32)
        let xOffset:CGFloat = 50
        let yOffset:CGFloat = 50
        // Column characters
        let alphas:String = "abcdefgh"
        // Used to alternate between white and black squares
        var toggle:Bool = false
        for row in 0...numRows-1 {
            for col in 0...numCols-1 {
                // Letter for this column
                let colChar = Array(alphas)[col]
                // Determine the color of square
                let color = toggle ? SKColor.whiteColor() : SKColor.blackColor()
                let square = SKSpriteNode(color: color, size: squareSize)
                square.position = CGPointMake(CGFloat(col) * squareSize.width + xOffset,
                    CGFloat(row) * squareSize.height + yOffset)
                // Set sprite's name (e.g., a8, c5, d1)
                square.name = "\(colChar)\(8-row)"
                self.addChild(square)
                toggle = !toggle
            }
            toggle = !toggle
        }
    }

This method returns the square node with the specified name

    func squareWithName(name:String) -> SKSpriteNode? {
        let square:SKSpriteNode? = self.childNodeWithName(name) as SKSpriteNode?
        return square
    }