Cocos2d multipack sprite sheet animation example - How to load a multipack sprite sheet?

Question

I am new to Cocos2d and in the past 3 days have been trying to load a multipack sprite sheet animation.

I was unable to find a tutorial or a working example and looked at raywenderlich.com and found this post which discusses single file sprite sheet animation: Example 1

This Example 2 does not work as well:

So how to load a multipack sprite sheet?

Thanks

I added my code which works partially. The problems are: 1) The files -ipadhd and -hd are not recognised as expected (in other animations they are recognised so the settings in AppDelegate is Ok) 2) When multipack animation is loaded I get an Exception File example:apple0.png, apple0.plist, apple0-hd.png ,apple0-hd.plist, apple1-hd.png, apple1-hd.plist, apple0-ipadhd.png, apple0-ipadhd.plist, apple1-ipadhd.png, apple1-ipadhd.plist

        NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
        BOOL exists = YES;
        int plistIndex = -1;
        int tmpPlistIndex;
        NSMutableArray *availablePLists = [NSMutableArray array];

        NSMutableArray *imageFrames = [NSMutableArray array];
        NSMutableArray *spriteSheets = [NSMutableArray array];
        frameCount = 0;

        do {
            plistIndex +=1;
            NSString* plistFileName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d%@",plistIndex,item.fileName];

            plistFileName = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:plistFileName ofType:@"plist"];



            plistPath = plistFileName;
            [availablePLists addObject:plistPath];
            plistDict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:plistPath];
            frames = [plistDict objectForKey:@"frames"];
            frameCount += frames.count;

            tmpPlistIndex = plistIndex + 1;
            plistFileName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d%@",tmpPlistIndex,item.fileName];
            plistFileName = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:plistFileName ofType:@"plist"];

            exists = [fileManager fileExistsAtPath:plistFileName];

        } while (exists);


        NSLog(@"frame count is: %d",frameCount);

        plistIndex = -1;
        exists = YES;

        for(NSString *availablePList in availablePLists)
        {
            plistIndex += 1;


            plistDict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:availablePList];

            NSLog(@"PLIST FILE NAME = %@",availablePList );

            frames = [plistDict objectForKey:@"frames"];
            [[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] addSpriteFramesWithFile:availablePList];
            NSString* imageFileName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d%@.png",plistIndex,item.fileName];
            //  NSDictionary* metadata = [plistDict objectForKey:@"metadata"];
            // NSString* imageFileName = [metadata objectForKey:@"realTextureFileName"];

            CCSpriteBatchNode *spriteSheet = [CCSpriteBatchNode batchNodeWithFile:imageFileName];

            [self addChild:spriteSheet z:100];
            item.spriteSheet = spriteSheet;

            [spriteSheets addObject:spriteSheet];

            for (int i=0; i<frameCount; i++) {
                NSString * fileToLoad;

                if(i<10){
                    fileToLoad = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/000%d",item.fileName,i];
                }
                else if (i<100){
                    fileToLoad = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/00%d",item.fileName,i];
                }
                else{
                    fileToLoad = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/0%d",item.fileName,i];
                }


                if ([frames objectForKey:fileToLoad]){
                    NSLog(@"Found : %@",fileToLoad);
                    [imageFrames addObject:
                     [[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] spriteFrameByName:fileToLoad]];
                }

            }


        }//End available plists



        item.spriteAnimation = [CCAnimation animationWithSpriteFrames:imageFrames delay:0.1f];
        NSString* spriteImageName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/0000",item.fileName];
        NSLog(@"IMAGE LOADING spriteImageName : %@",spriteImageName);
        item.sprite = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:spriteImageName];
        NSLog(@"IMAGE LOADED spriteImageName : %@",spriteImageName);
        CGPoint point = item.itemInfo.position;//info.position;
        CGPoint pointScaled = [self scalePoint:point];
        item.sprite.position =  pointScaled;
        NSLog(@"POS name-%@ pos (%f, %f)",item.name,item.sprite.position.x,item.sprite.position.y);
        item.sprite.anchorPoint=ccp(0, 0);

        for(CCSpriteBatchNode* spriteSheet in spriteSheets){

            //[spriteSheet addChild:item.sprite];
            [self  addChild:item.sprite];

        }

Answer 1

I'm working in cocos2d-html5 and cocos2dx with js bindings but - my answer should still apply. There is no special handling of multipack within cocos2d as far as I am aware, this is a construct available within Texture packer. You should load all of your plists + pngs as if they were individual nodes. From there, you should be able to create sprites and animations from any of them as they'll all be in the cache.

Code:

jc.makeSpriteWithMultipackPlist = function(plists, pngs, startFrame){
    var sprite = new cc.Sprite();
    for(var i =0;i<plists.length;i++){
        var plist = plists[i];
        var png = pngs[i];
        if (!jc.parsed[plist]){
            cc.SpriteFrameCache.getInstance().addSpriteFrames(plist);
            cc.SpriteBatchNode.create(png);
            jc.parsed[plist]=true;
        }
    }

    var frame = cc.SpriteFrameCache.getInstance().getSpriteFrame(startFrame);
    if (!frame){
        throw "Frame: " + startFrame +  " not in cache.";
    }
    sprite.initWithSpriteFrame(frame);
    sprite.retain();
    return sprite;
}