How to give shadow effects to label items in cocos2D?

I have moving sprites in my game and have added labels on it (CCLabelTTF). The labels have characters like A, B, C etc. I want to give a shadow effect to the contents of labels so that they are properly visible.

in .h file i have

CCLabelTTF *label;

and in .m i have set its position and color. "target" is the sprite on which there are labels.

    target=[CCSprite spriteWithFile:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"balloon%d.png",enType] rect:CGRectMake(0, 0, 100, 119)];

label = [[CCLabelTTF alloc] initWithString:alphabetValue dimensions:CGSizeMake([target contentSize].width, [target contentSize].height)  
                                     alignment:UITextAlignmentCenter fontName:@"verdana" fontSize:30.0f];

    //LABEL POSITION HERE
    label.position = ccp(55,30);

    label.color = ccc3(60,60,60);

    [target addChild:label z: 10];

Now i want to give a shadow effect...how can i do so?

Answers

Add the same label twice, one time slightly bigger. The shadow label should be created first to make it appear behind the actual label, or use the z property.

CGSize size = CGSizeMake([target contentSize].width, [target contentSize].height);
labelShadow = [[CCLabelTTF alloc] initWithString:alphabetValue 
                                dimensions:size  
                                 alignment:UITextAlignmentCenter
                                  fontName:@"verdana" fontSize:30.0f];
labelShadow.position = ccp(55+2,30+2); // slightly offset
labelShadow.color = ccc3(10,10,10);
[target addChild:labelShadow z:10];

label = [[CCLabelTTF alloc] initWithString:alphabetValue 
                                dimensions:size  
                                 alignment:UITextAlignmentCenter
                                  fontName:@"verdana" fontSize:30.0f];
label.position = ccp(55,30);
label.color = ccc3(60,60,60);
[target addChild:label z:10];

You can also experiment with slightly scaling the labelShadow up, or increasing its fontSize.

Note: it's not going to create a soft (blurred) shadow. For that you could use the texture filter methods available here.

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