Swift 3 Game Development - Second 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: ...