Beginning Android Games, to Learn More About Game Development for Android

I’m happy to announce that my book, OpenGL ES 2 for Android: A Quick-Start Guide, is now being readied to be sent off to the printers! I owe a special thanks to the publishers, to you guys, my readers and reviewers, and I also owe a special thanks to Mario Zechner, the creator of libgdx, for writing a great foreword and generously helping to promote the book on his end!

Mario has also co-authored ”Beginning Android Games” with Robert Green;  I think that his book can be the perfect complement to my own, as you’ll also learn about many of the additional aspects of game development that I didn’t get the chance to cover in my own book, such as:

  • How to develop 2D games, from beginning to end.
  • How to publish to the market, support your users, and deal with crash reports.
  • Using the Native Development Kit (NDK) to support C and C++ code.

If you’re looking to hit additional platforms, libgdx also has you covered. You can port your Java-based Android game to the desktop, to the web via WebGL, and even to iOS with a few nifty tricks. I plan to cover cross-platform development using libgdx in some subsequent posts, as well as going by the C / C++ route which I will also be covering in future posts.

If you use Reddit, you can also visit our respective Reddit threads here:

I just completed my first book: “OpenGL ES 2 for Android: A Quick-Start Guide” for beginners

My book “Beginning Android Games, 2nd Edition” is out, and i’m super happy

I’m glad that the book is finally starting to head out the door; it feels like the end of a journey. It was a journey that was well worth it. :)

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Developing a Simple Game of Air Hockey Using C++ and OpenGL ES 2 for Android, iOS, and the Web

Some of you have been curious about what the air hockey game from the book would be like if we wrapped it up, with support for sound, AI, and so forth. I would like to find out, myself. In the spirit of my last post about cross-platform development, I want to continue the air hockey [...]

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Site Updates, and Thoughts on Native Development for the Web

I’ve recently been spending time travelling overseas, taking a bit of a break after reaching an important milestone with the book, and also taking a bit of a rest from working for myself! The trip has been good so far, and I’ve even been keeping up to date with items from the RSS feed. Here [...]

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Introducing GLWallpaperService

Are you looking to make a live wallpaper for Android? Wondering how to use OpenGL from a wallpaper service? Mark Guerra and some other contributors have kindly made their work available on GitHub, at https://github.com/GLWallpaperService/GLWallpaperService. This repository includes an OpenGL wallpaper service as well as several samples that show you how to use the service. Yours [...]

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Announcing the New Forums, and a Roundup!

Starting from today, Learn OpenGL ES now has a new community section of the site with a new set of forums! [Edit: Due to some technical issues and low usage, I have disabled the forums until further notice. I would still like to have a forums section in the future, so they can come back [...]

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Introducing OpenGL ES for Android: A Quick-Start Guide, Now in Beta

Hi all, After nearly a year of working with the great team over at The Pragmatic Bookshelf, I am happy to announce that OpenGL ES for Android: A Quick-Start Guide is now in beta! OpenGL ES for Android: A Quick-Start Guide follows in the tradition of this website and goes into more detail, teaching you how [...]

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OpenGL Community Roundup, January 2013 Edition

Welcome to another community round-up! A lot of people have been busy, creating great games, tutorials, and live wallpapers. Check them out below (in alphabetical order): Advancing Usability How to use the new OpenGL features of Qt5 Ino Pizza Snake Free pleyasLab Dolphins Real 3D Gaia 3D HD Free Rene van der Lende Kube — a tutorial [...]

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OpenGL Community Roundup, October Edition

It’s almost Halloween, which means it’s time to showcase another great set of apps and posts from the community. First up, we have… Wubbly Bubble Live Wallpaper This interesting and lively live wallpaper renders a deforming 3D bubble to your home screen, with five different themes, many options for customization, and it runs on a [...]

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Understanding OpenGL’s Matrices

I often get questions related to OpenGL’s matrices: how do they work, how do they get built, and so forth. This is a topic that I have been frequently confused by, myself, and I feel that it warrants further explanation. To better understand OpenGL’s matrices, and how and why we use them, we first need [...]

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Spiral Maze!

Check Out These Cool Live Wallpapers, Games, and Tutorials by Fellow Learn OpenGL ESers!

The community has been busy here at Learn OpenGL ES, as many visitors have been developing fantastic games, live wallpapers, and tutorials of their own! I’d like to highlight some of the work that I have come across in recent weeks; if you’re part of the community here and would like to be featured as [...]

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