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

Adding alternative input controls


The last and rather short topic in this chapter will show you how to use the peripheral devices using the example of accelerometers, which are very common types of sensors in today's smartphones and tablets. Accelerometers are subsystems that reliably and accurately detect and measure acceleration, tilt, shock, and vibration. Basically, we just need to read the sensor data that is being measured by the accelerometer hardware and later translate the data into values and/or ranges suitable for our game.

Accelerometers in Android devices are exposed by Libgdx using the three axes x, y, and z, which can be queried via the Gdx.input module. For instance, the current acceleration value for the x axis can be easily retrieved as follows:

float ax = Gdx.input.getAccelerometerX();

This is great, but what does the value that we just stored in ax actually mean? Moreover, what will influence it? So, to better understand how sensors work, we need to know what exactly is...