Adding Pause/Play Buttons to your iPhone Game using Cocos2d

In developing the iPhone version of Word Crank it took me a while to figure out how to add the pause/play buttons using Cocos2d.  One post that I found suggested using the CCMenuItemToggle class of Cocos2d.  That is exactly what I used and after some playing around with the code I finally was able to get the the pause/play buttons to function properly.

I'm sharing the code below to assist others from going through the endless search that I made.

Source Code

[sourcecode language="objc"]
CCSprite *pauseButton = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"pause_button.png"];
CCSprite *pauseButton2 = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"pause_button.png"];

CCSprite *playButton = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"play_button.png"];
CCSprite *playButton2 = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"play_button.png"];

pauseBtn = [[CCMenuItemImage itemFromNormalSprite:pauseButton
selectedSprite:pauseButton2
target:nil
selector:nil] retain];

playBtn = [[CCMenuItemImage itemFromNormalSprite:playButton
selectedSprite:playButton2
target:nil
selector:nil] retain];

CCMenuItemToggle *toggleItem = [CCMenuItemToggle itemWithTarget:self
selector:@selector(pausePlayButtonTapped:)
items:pauseBtn, playBtn, nil];

// Create a menu and add your menu items to it
CCMenu *pausePlayMenu = [CCMenu menuWithItems:toggleItem, nil];
pausePlayMenu.position = ccp(300, 56);
[self addChild:pausePlayMenu z:10];
[/sourcecode]

Source Code Notes

One thing to notice is that I had to create 2 Sprites for each of the pause and play buttons because Cocos2d doesn't let you add the same Sprite twice to create the MenuItem object.

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