CartoonSmart Tutorials

Learn how to start programming a game using Sprite Kit on Apple Watch. This tutorial using Xcode 8, Swift 3 and targets Watch OS3 on the simulator. You’ll learn how to add a Watch target to an existing Sprite Kit based object, add a WKSwipeGestureRecognizer to the InterfaceController than ultimately detect those swipes in the GameScene.swift.

Hosts: Justin Dike

Switching from Swift 2.2 to 3 in Xcode 8 (CartoonSmart Video Tutorial Podcast Episode 34)

In this video tutorial podcast we’ll take a look at a typical Universal Swift based project and up convert it to Swift 3. We’ll be using an early version of Xcode 8, so things may change later on, but this will give you Swift 3 early adopters an idea of what to expect when converting from Swift 2.2 or 2.3 to Swift 3.

Hosts: Justin Dike, Clevon O’Doul

In this Adobe Animate / Flash video tutorial, we’ll teach how to draw vector art to look like retro pixel art. Ironic huh. And as the title says, in particular we’ll mockup a Donkey Kong style board. We’ll also teach how to animate a rolling barrel. As usual with our podcasts we are joined by my alter-ego Clevon. Enjoy!

Hosts: Justin Dike, Clevon O’Doul

Today we’ll look at how to take a series of already-exported images, import them into either Adobe Flash or Animate, make mass changes to them using the Edit Multiple Frames option, then re-export them.

Hosts: Justin Dike, Clevon O’Doul

Sets / Set Collections in Swift (CartoonSmart Video Tutorial Podcast 31)

This Swift video tutorial we’ll talk about creating Set collection variables. Sets are similar to arrays, but are unordered collections. You can check if a set contains an element using the .contains property. You can add or remove to a Set using .insert and .remove . You iterate through a set collection using a for loop. You can also compare collections using .isSubsetOf , .isSupersetOf , .isDisjointWith .

Hosts: Justin Dike, Clevon O’Doul

This Swift video tutorial we’ll talk about logical AND (&&) and OR ( || ) operators. Okay, not the most exciting Swift tutorial, but an essential for anyone programing an iOS or tvOS app with Xcode.

Hosts: Justin Dike, Clevon O’Doul

In this Swift video tutorial, we’ll talk about nil coalescing operators. This operator, defined by two question marks ( ?? ), allows you to quickly set a variable equal to a default value if another variable is nil. For example, let someVar = varThatMightBeNil ?? defaultAmount

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or through your favorite RSS reader at Cartoonsmart.com/podcasts or check out our more serious tutorials by visiting the main page at CartoonSmart.com

Hosts: Justin Dike, Clevon O’Doul

This video tutorial we’ll talk about how to shorthand some if…else statements with the ternary conditional operators. With a bool variable you can quickly make a value equal something based on two conditions. For example… let someVar = question ? answer1 : answer2 , where question is a bool variable.

This video is from CartoonSmart’s Video Tutorial Podcast, so keep in mind, this is partly just for fun. We keep things light. Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or through your favorite RSS reader at Cartoonsmart.com/podcasts or check out our more serious tutorials by visiting the main page at CartoonSmart.com

Hosts: Justin Dike, Clevon O’Doul

In this Swift video tutorial, we’ll discuss the how’s and why’s of programming optional variables in any of your iOS or tvOS apps or games. Optionals allow you to test if a variable is nil or not. We’ll go over testing for nil values, then safely forcing a value from an optional variable.

Hosts: Justin Dike, Clevon O’Doul

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In the first couple minutes we’ll give viewers a little background on why they might want to pause, then repeat the last action in an SKAction sequence (specifically, we’ll take a quick look at our current Card and Board Games tutorial series). Sprite Kit allows developers to create sequences of code, for example, you might move a star up on the Y axis, then left on the X axis, then scale it down, and so on. But you can also create an SKAction (SKAction.runBlock) which simply runs a block of code, which provides for some really advanced functionality. In our example, we’ll create a sequence that waits for a duration (SKAction.waitForDuration) then runs a block of code, then waits again, then runs more code and so on. So what happens if we want to re-run one of those actions. For example, if the code prompted users to “Draw another card”, in a card game.  We would need to track backward in the original SKAction sequence, and run it again from there. This obviously makes for an interesting example! Even if you’re currently watching our Card and Board Games tutorial series for iOS or tvOS apps, you’ll probably enjoy this stripped down version of what’s taught there.

Hosts: Justin Dike, Clevon O’Doul