Main Scene and Game State - Learn SpriteBuilder for iOS Game Development - page 206

Figure 7-1 . The Menu images as seen in the Tileless Editor View
If you want to provide your own images, you should have about three screen-sized images
forming the menu's background layers. Screen-sized means the lowest common denomin-
ator size—that is, 568x384 points if your app should run on both iPhones and iPads. Con-
sidering that the iPad is scaled by a factor of two and that there are Retina iPads that add
another scale factor of two, the full-screen images should be 2272x1536 pixels in size. If
you design your app to run only on iPhones, your reference size should be 568x320
points. Thus, you only need images that fit the iPhone Retina screen—in other words, the
full-screen images should be 1136x640 pixels in size. See Chapter 3 if you need a refresh-
er on resolution and image sizes.
You may be wondering why all of the background layer images should be screen-sized.
Isn't this a waste of memory and doesn't it increase file size? Actually, no. If you place
these images in a Sprite Sheet, SpriteBuilder will cut off any excess transparent areas. It
will crop off the transparent parts and store only the smallest possible rectangle that en-
closes any and all nontransparent pixels. Figure 7-2 illustrates this.