SpriteKit Flappy Bird

A SpriteKit rewrite of the world-famous Flappy Bird.

Comments

• The project uses a "GameObject" protocol that allows SKScene to forward some of its callbacks to conforming children. Ex. SKScene.update() calls update() on all of its children.

• While the gameplay works great, there's an occasional bug with audio. SKAction.playSoundFileNamed(_:waitForCompletion:) was designed for simple sound effects. Sadly in practice I got unreliable results. Apparently other developers have been encountering this issue for years. A real project might use SKAudioNode or AVPlayer.

• I don't have every asset from the original game. So no pause button or fancy medals after a game over.

Changes I would make for a bigger game

• In a larger project I might have made GameObject a word-for-word copy of all SKScene callbacks. Here, it only has 3 functions - setUp(), update() and changeState(to:).

• Because this game really only takes place in one scene, I ended up using a GameState enum to keep track of which nodes are visible. I'm not a fan of the enum. Each of the states in a real project (menu, playing, game over, settings, etc) would be their own SKScenes and instead of updating an enum case, I would be transitioning to a new SKScene altogether. Breaking them into separate SKScenes would mean fewer nodes to keep track of and no "state" logic making sure the right things are hidden.

Previews

Disclaimer

This application was written for educational purposes under Fair Use. I don't own Flappy Bird or any of its art and audio assets.