Swift Game Development - Third Edition

Recycling emitter nodes with particle pools

We do not need to create a new emitter node for every single crate in our game. Instead, we will create a small pool of emitter nodes when the game starts and reposition them when the player smashes a crate. This is a performance best practice as emitter nodes can use system resources quickly. Follow these steps to create a particle emitter node pooling system:

1. In Xcode, create a new .swift file named ParticlePool.swift, and add the following code to your new file:

    import SpriteKit class ParticlePool { var cratePool: [SKEmitterNode] = [] var heartPool: [SKEmitterNode] = [] var crateIndex = 0 var heartIndex = 0 // A property to store a reference to the GameScene: var gameScene = SKScene() init() { // Create ...