Book Image

Mastering AndEngine Game Development

By : Maya Posch
Book Image

Mastering AndEngine Game Development

By: Maya Posch

Overview of this book

AndEngine is a popular and easy-to-use game framework, best suited for Android game development. After learning the basics of creating an Android game using AndEngine it's time you move beyond the basics to explore further. For this you need to understand the theory behind many of the technologies AndEngine uses. This book aims to provide all the skills and tools you need to learn more about Android game development using AndEngine. With this book you will get a quick overview of the basics of AndEngine and Android application development. From there, you will learn how to use 3D models in a 2D scene, render a visual representation of a scene's objects, and create interaction between these objects. You will explore frame-based animations and learn to use skeletal animations. As the book progresses, you will be guided through exploring all the relevant aspects of rendering graphics with OpenGL ES, generating audio using OpenSL ES and OpenAL, making the best use of Android's network API, implementing anti-aliasing algorithms, shaders, dynamic lighting and much more. With all this, you will be ready to enhance the look and feel of your game with its user interface, sound effects and background music. After an in-depth study of 2D and 3D worlds and multi-player implementations, you will be a master in AndEngine and Android game development.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Mastering AndEngine Game Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

OpenAL


OpenAL has, for a long time, been a sticking point in Android. Before it became available, it was common for people to cross-compile the OpenAL runtime for Android and use the resulting library in their application because of the lack of a proper game-oriented audio API.

In short, using OpenAL is often unnecessary now, unless you have some kind of pressing need that OpenSL ES doesn't cover. These aren't many, considering the fact that OpenAL for Android uses either AudioTrack or OpenSL ES as the backend. Since OpenAL or any other non-native audio library doesn't have direct access to the device's hardware, there's little that you can change there.

If you do have to use OpenAL for compatibility purposes or the like, the easiest way is to use OpenAL Soft (http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal.html). An Android-based version can be found at https://github.com/apportable/openal-soft. This is a software version of OpenAL, essentially providing an OpenAL-compatible wrapper around whatever backend...