Loading the level data
In Eskimo, since I only have five levels, I chose to have one .plist
file that contains all levels. This may not be the best option in a larger game.
Although Apple devices will load and parse the .plist
files quickly, the same may not be true for other targets. So limit the size of your .plist
files by organizing the data into multiple files. You've probably seen games that divide their levels into multiple groups or packs. This is a simple way to create an extra preloading screen your game can use to parse level data. This can also be used as a means to keep file sizes to a minimum.
In Eskimo, we could have the .plist
files containing 10 levels each, for instance, and then 10 groups of these, totaling 100 levels.
So it's time to load our .plist
file and parse the data for our levels.