Category Archives: Game Development

Android, Game Development, Miscellaneous

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

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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 (EDIT: It seems someone removed my Reddit thread! Oh well :()

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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Air Hockey Project, Android, Game Development, iOS, Native Development (C, C++), WebGL

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

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Some of you have been curious about what the air hockey game from the book would be like if we brought it over to other platforms. I would like to find out, myself. :) In the spirit of my last post about cross-platform development, I want to port the air hockey project over to a native cross-platform code base that can be built for Android and iOS, and even the web by using emscripten and WebGL. Everything will be open-source and available on GitHub.

Here are some of the things that we’ll have to figure out and learn along the way:

  • Setting up a simple build system for each platform.
  • Initializing OpenGL.
  • Adding support for basic touch and collision detection.

In the next post, we’ll take a look at setting up a simple build system to initialize OpenGL across these different platforms. Here are all of the posts for the series so far:

Setting up a simple build system

Adding support for PNG loading into a texture

Adding a 3d perspective, mallets, and a puck

Adding touch events and basic collision detection

The code is available on Github, with each section organized by tags.

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Android, Game Development

Open Source Cross-Platform OpenGL Frameworks for Android

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Android robot logo.

Image via Wikipedia

Let’s say you’ve decided to develop the next viral game for Android. You now have a choice: Do you go with a pre-packaged solution, flawed and rough around the edges though it may be, or do you decide to DIY (Do It Yourself) which has the disadvantage of reinventing the wheel and spending more time writing boiler-plate code? You also need to decide if you are going to go with a commercial solution or with one of the open-source libraries available.

Here are two of the more well-known open-source libraries that won’t cost you a dime to use:

libgdx

libgdx is an open-source framework which abstracts away the job of developing graphics for Android, and it also allows you to build for the desktop with only a few lines of code. It also appears to have support for OpenGL 2 on the desktop, though using standard OpenGL 2 instead of OpenGL ES 2.

forplay

forplay is a cross-platform library for developing games to target to the desktop, HTML5, Android, and Flash. It seems to be geared toward making 2d platformers rather than more intensive 3D games. Examples of forplay in action and more information can be seen at the Google IO 2011 session titled “Kick-ass Game Programming with Google Web Toolkit“.

Using a framework versus DIY

The pros

You can focus on the implementation of your app or game and save development time by not having to reinvent the wheel and rewrite boiler-plate code; being able to build for different platforms with only a few lines of code is a neat thing. Rovio reportedly used forplay in the development of the WebGL version of Angry Birds.

The cons

By using a framework, you won’t learn about the finer details of OpenGL ES and other aspects of game development, and ultimately, you’ll want to learn and understand these finer details if you also want to understand the broader picture. You’ll also have to live with the design decisions and implementation details of the various frameworks, as well as any rough edges. If you’re targeting Android and the Android Market, it’s better to test on and develop for the phone rather than on the desktop — it’s better to do well on one platform than mediocre on a few.

Conclusion

With the wide availability of code snippets and open-source libraries, there’s no need to go either-or. You can go with an existing framework if that’s most convenient for you, or you can start building from scratch, while taking code and math from the vast array of resources available on the Internet. Be sure to check the licenses before using code from other libraries — some open-source libraries are GPL licensed, which requires you to make your source code available for others should you incorporate it into your own code.

As always, don’t hesitate to leave your comments and feedback. :)

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