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

Key to success lies in planning


Great! Now you have a basic understanding of what a game is and may need. It appears to be a good idea to dedicate some additional time to think about your first game project and create a plan for it. In general, planning your game projects is what you should always do in the first place before any actual work is done. For novice game developers it might be very tempting to skip this planning phase, which admittedly is a lot more fun in the beginning, but this approach is very likely to fall short in the long run. You will need some sort of outline of what you want to achieve. It does not have to be a very long and detailed description.

A simple and brief feature list of your design goals will do just fine for this purpose. The reason behind this is that you will make yourself aware of each single feature that is part of your game. In addition, this list will also serve you as a great tool to measure and compare your progress in the game during the development phase. Please bear in mind that game development is a very dynamic and iterative process. Although you should try to adhere to your list of design goals for most of the time, there should always be room to adapt to shifting requirements. Just keep in mind that adhering to the list will make sure that you are going to push development in the right direction. Conversely, it will let you focus on the important parts first, while also protecting you from running out of time and taking too many detours that prevent you from reaching the finish line due to unclear goals.