Is it possible to compile Sprite Kit app/game for iOS 6?

Question

Is it possible to compile Sprite Kit (new feature with XCode5) app/game for iOS 6? I have compiled Application for deployment target iOS6, tested on simmulator but i dont know if it will work on physical device.

Answer 1

I would say that this question violates the NDA, but this can be answered in a general way: NO, you cannot. Apple frameworks are dynamically linked. What this means is that each version of iOS comes loaded with specific libraries from Apple, and they will be linked to at runtime instead of being compiled into your binary. If you use a version of iOS that does not include these frameworks, your app will crash because it will be unable to find the library at runtime.

To be more accurate you can compile SpriteKit calls but you can't run SpriteKit calls.

Answer 2

You can compile it but using that as "optional" (link with binary option just mark the library as "Optional" instead of "required") so that when you would use iOS 6 your app would still work and run on the device won't crash. You must pay attention that when calling to SpriteKit you would have to check that it is there...But that's another topic.

The problem is that On iOS 6 you would have to use another library/framework and not SpriteKit, Let say for example on iOS 6 you would use cocos2d with a very limited version of the game and when using more advanced OS that has SpriteKit you would give the user more features.

So it's possible but I'm not sure it is what you really want.