After watching a lot of indie game developers’ videos and checking out their websites I came across a java game framework called LibGDX. I decided to look into it, and I think it is the best way for me to go on with my current game project. LibGDX is a free open source game development framework written in the Java programming language with some C and C++ components for performance dependent code. It allows for development of desktop and mobile games by using the same code base. It also has cross platform development.
Framework vs Game Engine:
LibGDX is a framework not a game engine. A framework is essentially a code base that handles important aspects of games, usually hardware interfacing and input, but come with no predetermined rule set. A game engine is a set of tools and mechanisms prepared to make a certain type of game. Good examples of game engines are Unreal Engine and Unity.
Teaching Schedule:
I figured switching to LibGDX would be the best option for me, since I was already coding the project in Java. In about a month I will be teaching on top of my full-time job for the fall semester. So, this should allow me to design the game, but not have to code everything. Hopefully, saving me time in the development process.
LibGDX Version Work:
First, I imported the framework into an Eclipse project and started working on switching over my current project into the LIbGDX framework. Then I was able to figure out rendering the tiles to the screen as well as setting up the player and the movement animations. I first tested the setup by rendering each tile as 1 pixel. After I had that done I scaled up to 16 pixels per tile. Then I scaled everything by 3 for the view window. Today I was able to also get tile-based collision done, and I setup for entity collision for the future.
So far I only worked on printing the game maps default tiles. But, I should be able get the others working quickly since I already have working Java code for that. I will need to figure out the rendering process using the framework, but it shouldn’t be much different than the default tiles. I don’t think it will take me too long before I have everything working that I had working before. The framework should allow me to be able to get more done in less time. At least that is the idea.
This week I didn’t work on anything new. I mostly worked on learning the new framework and getting the project back to where I was originally. There is still a lot of work to do in order to get back to where I was. I think in the long run though, this transition will help speed up development. I wish I had known about this framework about 10 weeks ago. Hopefully over the next week or two I will be back to creating new content for the game and back on track. Until next time.