Tidy, Clean Access To SKNodes

Question

I'm trying to tidy some of my SKScene code. Currently I have about 11 references to SKNodes (some are layers containing sub-nodes). These nodes and their sub-nodes are frequently accessed by the class. The way I considered doing this is:

Subclass all the SKNodes to another class, for example, currently I have layerPause: SKNode? defined at the top of the SKScene. This would become layerPause: PauseMenu where:

class PauseMenu: SKNode
{
lazy var lbBestTime: SKLabelNode = childNodeWithName("lbPersonalBest") as! SKLabelNode
}

Then, when the scene is loading I can simply use:

layerPause = pauseScene.childNodeWithName("pauseMenu")?.copy() as? SKNode

This would allow me to easily access important sub-nodes without calling childNodeWithName all the time. But unfortunately, the PauseMenu class gives an error saying I can't use childNodeWithName method.

Could someone point me in the right direction? Maybe there is a more elegant way to manage my nodes, or perhaps I'm missing something simple in the PauseMenu subclass as described above.

Many thanks,

Answer 1

So close, you just need to add an explicit self:

class PauseMenu: SKNode
{
    lazy var lbBestTime: SKLabelNode = 
        self.childNodeWithName("lbPersonalBest") as! SKLabelNode
}