Book Image

Mastering AndEngine Game Development

By : Maya Posch
Book Image

Mastering AndEngine Game Development

By: Maya Posch

Overview of this book

AndEngine is a popular and easy-to-use game framework, best suited for Android game development. After learning the basics of creating an Android game using AndEngine it's time you move beyond the basics to explore further. For this you need to understand the theory behind many of the technologies AndEngine uses. This book aims to provide all the skills and tools you need to learn more about Android game development using AndEngine. With this book you will get a quick overview of the basics of AndEngine and Android application development. From there, you will learn how to use 3D models in a 2D scene, render a visual representation of a scene's objects, and create interaction between these objects. You will explore frame-based animations and learn to use skeletal animations. As the book progresses, you will be guided through exploring all the relevant aspects of rendering graphics with OpenGL ES, generating audio using OpenSL ES and OpenAL, making the best use of Android's network API, implementing anti-aliasing algorithms, shaders, dynamic lighting and much more. With all this, you will be ready to enhance the look and feel of your game with its user interface, sound effects and background music. After an in-depth study of 2D and 3D worlds and multi-player implementations, you will be a master in AndEngine and Android game development.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Mastering AndEngine Game Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Dealing with the third dimension


The first question that is likely to come to mind when it is suggested to use 3D models in what is advertised as a 2D engine is whether or not this will make the game engine into a 3D engine. The brief answer here is "No."

The longer answer is that despite the presence of these models, the engine's camera and other features are not aware of this third dimension, and so they will not be able to deal with it. It's not unlike the ray-casting engine employed by titles such as Wolfenstein 3D, which always operated in a horizontal plane and, by default, was not capable of tilting the camera to look up or down. This does imply that AndEngine can be turned into a 3D engine if all of its classes are adapted to deal with another dimension.

We're not going that far here, however. All that we are interested in right now is integrating 3D model support into the existing framework. For this, we need a number of things. The most important one is to be able to load these models...