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


In this chapter we covered the basics of the Box2D rigid body physics engine, and thereafter, applied the newly gained knowledge including all the individual parts (rigid body, body type, shape, fixture, and world) by creating a believable physics simulation of raining carrots. Also, two new game objects were added, which represented the carrot for physics simulations and a huge golden carrot statue symbolizing a level's goal or exit.

Then, we went down the graphics pipeline, more precisely the Programmable Pipeline of OpenGL (ES) 2.0 to explore the use of shaders. We created our own shader program to apply a monochrome filter effect of arbitrary intensity through a uniform variable that can be passed to the shader program at runtime in the application code. We learned about GLSL and created a simple pair of vertex and fragment shaders that is used in Canyon Bunny.

Finally, we learned how to use and work with peripheral devices using the example of an accelerometer. We also learned...