How to store level information on iOS

Question

Let's imagine I have a breakout game. I make a level like this:

For columns < max columns
    For rows < max rows
        Create sprite from file, put it on some position based on 
        current column and row, put it into array of objects.

Now, imagine I have 100 levels and I want them to be different. What tools should I use to ease my life? How do I load a level from file? Maybe a plist?

Answer 1

You can use any format that's convenient to you. plist works fine as you can easily parse it into data-structures without the need of external libraries. Also something like JSON or plain CSV would work. If you write a level-editor yourself, you can use any of these formats.

You don't have to write the level editor yourself though. Since your game is row/column based, a tile editor like Tiled works just fine. Cocos2d directly supports Tiled maps. I guess any other tile-editor will work fine too.

If you don't like Tiled and rather wish to freely position sprites, have a look at CocosBuilder.