Question

Suppose I was writing a game which involved a relatively complex geometric game board. Something like a dartboard.

I would want a view to display the game state. What is the best way to implement that view?

For example, should I draw the board off line in something like photoshop, add it as a resource, and then show it using a UIImageView? Or should I use drawing primitives and essentially draw the board programmatically?

What are the trade-offs?

If I do use an image, what format should I prefer? .png, .tiff, .gif, .jpg?

Thanks,
John

Answer 1

If you decide to go the image route you should use png. Displaying any other format you pay a performance hit (as mentioned in the comment).

To decide between building photoshop vs drawing via code you need to decide how much time you want to put into learning Quartz/CoreGraphics. Apple’s docs:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/GraphicsImaging/Conceptual/drawingwithquartz2d/Introduction/Introduction.html

If you already know Photoshop then building the graphic there is probably much easier, if you don’t then learning Quartz is prob a less steep learning curve than Photoshop…