Book Image

Learning AndEngine

By : Martin Varga
Book Image

Learning AndEngine

By: Martin Varga

Overview of this book

AndEngine is a very popular open source OpenGL (open graphics library) Android game engine, used to create mobile games quickly while maintaining the ability to fully customize them. This book will guide you through the whole development process of creating a mobile game for the Android platform using one of the most popular and easy-to-use game engines available today. Beginning with the very basics, you will learn how to install AndEngine, gather graphics, add sound and music assets, and design game rules. You will first design an example game and enhance it by adding various features over the course of the book. Each chapter adds more colors, enhances the game, and takes it to the next level. You will also learn how to work with Box2D, a popular 2D physics engine that forms an integral part of some of the most successful mobile games. By the end of the book, you will be able to create a complete, interactive, and fully featured mobile game for Android and publish it to Google Play.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Learning AndEngine
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Fonts and text


A font is a file that defines the characters and sometimes special glyphs and symbols that can be printed on the screen. Fonts are typically defined as vectors. Because AndEngine and the OpenGL library in general don't work with vectors, we must first create a raster or bitmap font. We can imagine it as printing the entire alphabet with special characters using a font of our choice on an image and cutting out the letters. Afterwards, we create words using these cut-outs.

The following code shows how we load the font in the ResourceManager class:

//font
public Font font;

public void loadFont() {
  font = FontFactory.createStroke(activity.getFontManager(), activity.getTextureManager(), 256, 256, Typeface.create(Typeface.SANS_SERIF, Typeface.BOLD), 50, true, Color.WHITE_ABGR_PACKED_INT, 2, Color.BLACK_ABGR_PACKED_INT);
  font.load();
}

The first parameter passed is the FontManager class. It's an AndEngine class that takes care of managing the fonts. The second parameter is the...