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

Backends


Libgdx makes use of several other libraries to interface the specifics of each platform in order to provide cross-platform support for your applications. Generally, a backend is what enables Libgdx to access the corresponding platform functionalities when one of the abstracted (platform-independent) Libgdx methods is called. For example, drawing an image to the upper-left corner of the screen, playing a sound file at a volume of 80 percent, or reading and writing from/to a file.

Libgdx currently provides the following three backends:

  • LWJGL (Lightweight Java Game Library)

  • Android

  • JavaScript/WebGL

As already mentioned in Chapter 1, Introduction to Libgdx and Project Setup, there will also be an iOS backend in the near future.

LWJGL (Lightweight Java Game Library)

LWJGL (Lightweight Java Game Library) is an open source Java library originally started by Caspian Rychlik-Prince to ease game development in terms of accessing the hardware resources on desktop systems. In Libgdx, it is used for...