Book Image

Learning Libgdx Game Development

Book Image

Learning Libgdx Game Development

Overview of this book

Game development is a field of interdisciplinary skills, which also makes it a very complex topic in many respects. One decision that usually needs to be made at the beginning of a game development processis to define the kind of computer system or platform the game will be developed for. This does not pose any problems in general but as soon as the game should also be able to run on multiple platforms it will become a developer's nightmare to maintain several distinct copies of the same game. This is where the libGDX multi-platform game development framework comes to the rescue! "Learning Libgdx Game Development" is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with all the information you need to know about the libGDX framework as well as game development in general so you can start developing your own games for multiple platforms. You will gradually acquire deeper knowledge of both, libGDX and game development while you work through twelve easy-to-follow chapters. "Learning Libgdx Game Development" will walk you through a complete game development cycle by creating an example game that is extended with new features over several chapters. These chapters handle specific topics such as organizing resources, managing game scenes and transitions, actors, a menu system, using an advanced physics engine and many more. The chapters are filled with screenshots and/or diagrams to facilitate comprehension. "Learning Libgdx Game Development" is the book for you if you want to learn how to write your game code once and run it on a multitude of platforms using libGDX.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Learning Libgdx Game Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 1. Introduction to Libgdx and Project Setup

This book will take you on an exciting tour to show and teach you about game development using the open source Libgdx framework. Actually, you have chosen just the right time to read about game development as the game industry is in a remarkable state of change. With the advent of increasingly powerful smartphones and tablets as well as the ever-growing application stores for desktop computers and mobile platforms serving millions of users a day, it has never been easier for Independent Game Developers (also known as Indies) to enter the market with virtually no risks and very low budgets.

In this chapter you will learn about what Libgdx is and what the advantages are to use it for developing your own games. You will also get a brief overview of the feature set that Libgdx provides.

Before you can start developing games with Libgdx, you have to install and set up your development environment accordingly. You will be using the freely available and open source software Eclipse as your Integrated Development Environment (IDE ) and set up a basic project that uses Libgdx. It will feature a runnable example application for each currently supported target platform. These platforms are as follows:

  • Windows

  • Linux

  • Mac OS X

  • Android (Version 1.5 and above)

  • HTML5 (Using JavaScript and WebGL)

Note

The target platforms Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X will from now on be referred to as Desktop and also share a project in our development environment.

An alert reader may have noticed that iOS is missing in the list of supported target platforms. Fortunately, it is very likely that Libgdx will support the iOS platform soon as the developers have already put great effort into this feature. At the time of writing of this book, it is said that iOS, starting from Version 5.0 and above, will be supported.

Furthermore, you are going to explore what a game needs by looking at it from a technical standpoint, and why it is so important to plan a game project before the development starts.

At the end of this chapter, you will be introduced to the game project that is going to be developed and enhanced throughout this book.