iOS Build (Second Attempt: Success)

I added a new outro scene, and now the game is essentially complete.

Checkpoint

Intro scene:

Playground entrance scene:

Playground scene:

Building for iOS (iPad)

After encountering an error including SDL_image, I was finally able to build the project using Xcode 16 on a newer PC.

The SDL_image Xcode project does not support Xcode 12. When I attempted to open SDL_image.xcodeproj to change the configuration, I received the following error:

1
The file couldn’t be opened.

I tried downloading older versions of the library, but none of them worked, and I’m not sure why. The versions I tried were 2.8.4, 2.8.3, 2.6.3, and 2.0.5.

Including SDL_image and SDL_mixer in the iOS Project

I followed the official guide to include SDL_image in the Xcode project as a subproject: github.com/libsdl-org/SDL_image/blob/b56698cc/docs/INTRO-xcode.md. I used SDL_image 2.8.4.

I took a similar approach to include SDL_mixer, using SDL_mixer 2.8.0.

Troubleshooting

Linking SDL_mixer Returned an Error

It was not finding some header files from SDL. It turned out I needed to add the SDL “Public Headers” path to the first position in the SDL_mixer subproject “Header Search Paths” configuration.

Asset File Names Must Be Unique

For instance, I had four different background.png files stored in four different directories. I had to rename the files to fix the error.

Asset File References Don’t Allow Directories

I initially stored asset files in directories, but iOS requires the references not to include directories. For example, fox/walking.png needed to be updated to walking.png. I later abstracted the asset files references.

Window Size

I initially set a fixed window size of 800x600, but the iPhone screen is smaller and the iPad screen is larger. I resolved the issue by setting a logical size using SDL_RenderSetLogicalSize.

Mouse Coordinates

After setting the logical size, the mouse coordinates were incorrect because SDL_GetMouseState, the function I was using to get the position of the mouse, returns the absolute mouse coordinates, bypassing the code to adjust mouse coordinates according to the render logical size. I fixed the issue by using the coordinates stored in the SDL_MouseMotionEvent: event.motion.x and event.motion.y.

Animations and Movement Too Fast on iOS

The game loop speed is dependent on the device’s speed, and I didn’t account for this in the fox position updates while moving. I have decided to address this issue later.