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

Summary


We learned a lot in this chapter about Libgdx and all the other bits and bobs to prepare your system for multi-platform game development, specifically on the following points:

  • We discussed every step in great detail to successfully download, install, and configure all required software components: JDK, Eclipse, Libgdx, Android SDK, and two additional Eclipse plugins for Android and HTML5/GWT

  • We learned how to use the project setup tool that comes with Libgdx to easily generate all required Eclipse projects for a new application, and how to import them into Eclipse including minor troubleshooting

  • We also learned what a game needs to come alive

  • We found out why planning game projects is so important

  • We have seen how to plan a game project by writing an outline

In Chapter 2, Cross-platform Development – Build Once, Deploy Anywhere, you will learn more about how to deploy and run a Libgdx application on all supported target platforms. Building on this knowledge, we will finally jump to the first code examples where the magic happens and take a closer look at it to find out how it works.