To better grasp how AndEngine's rendering process works, you need to be familiar with how drawing meshes with OpenGL works. To this end, we'll run through a basic OpenGL ES 2.0 application on Android. Those who already have OpenGL ES 2.0 experience can likely skip this section. Others should read this to either learn about the basics of OpenGL or learn how Android's OpenGL API works.
For those unfamiliar with the differences between OpenGL and OpenGL ES, an easy way to understand it is that OpenGL ES (embedded systems) is a stripped-down version of OpenGL suitable for the more limited graphics processors on embedded systems, including gaming consoles and smartphones. While this doesn't really affect the basic rendering functionality, for advanced features, it is somewhat more limiting than the full OpenGL API. However, it will have no significant effect in the case of general game development on embedded systems, including our own efforts in this book.
Getting started...