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I am still very new to coding and Stack Overflow, this is my first question. I have been coding random apps, and experimenting with Android for the last 3-4 months. I recently published my first app. Just a day counter, with a widget. Still pretty basic, but my intention has always been to create Android games. My question is where do I start to make an Android game? Should I make games using just the default libraries and API on Android Studio or should I just make a Java game on Eclipse then try to import it to Android. I am trying to start by doing a simple 2D game. Can someone please explain to me what options do I have, or point me in the right direction please. Thank you.
You can use either Android standard API like Canvas API or OpenGL ES A good book explaining both aspects is Mario Zechner's Beginning Android Games. You can find a good examples of using both API in different games.
Also you can use third party frameworks and engines. Good one is Cocos2d-x (it is c++ framework) it is well known open source cross platform game development framework with good community and a lot of examples and books over the internet.
Also you can check Unity (C# or JavaScript) it is proprietary game engine extremely easy to learn and use (you can make many features like sprite animation without any code). This engine have large community and books. There is also a ton of well written documentation. (There are two licenses personal and pro).
Another good is Unreal Engine (C++) it is similar to Unity but from other developer. This is also good engine for game development and free to download and use (you must pay 5% royalty to epic games only if you earned more than 3k on your game).
There is also libGdx framework for cross platform development (java).
You can also check marmalade(C++), Corona SDK (Lua), AndEngine (pure android game engine).
My own opinion you should check Unity or Cocos2d-x. These are two most popular engines for Android/iOS game development so you will easily find books, videos and tutorials and even video courses (1 2) how to work with these engines.
you should try andengine for 2d games. you can find basic tutorials here
Start with GameSalad
easy and fast.
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Can I create simple programs for Android using Kivy or do I have to learn Java?
By simple, I mean some graphics (some rotating lines, a timer, a highscore), a memo etc not real-time games.
I've created this kind of programs for Windows/Linux and I'd really like to extend to Android.
On Google, most of the answers say that I should learn Java, whereas the remaining answers say that Python is pretty good. I also asked this question on chat, and some said 'yes', while others said 'no' and finally someone said "All programming languages get to be translated to JavaScript, so it is not much of a difference".
No. And may be Yes. Let me explain.
No:
The app will not look native if you use Kivy
There will be a lag in startup
You can call native Java API using Pyjnius but sometimes it won't work fine or you will need to work very hard to get simple things done.
Because you can not use the native UI, crafting a good looking android app might be a lot of work.
Yes:
You can build an app that works
Many games and apps don't use native UI but they are still very usable
You can use projects like Plyer and Pyjnius to get the common android functionality
Kivy might be an excellent choice for games
My recommendation:
Please do check out the apps and games built with Kivy on Play Store. Play with them on your phone or tab. See how they look and feel. Checkout the Kivy docs and see what they offer.
PS: I am a big time Python fan and I do like Kivy. I hope and believe that it will offer better widgets and UI integrations in the future. I wish Kivy offered something like NativeScript where I could use Python to create native widgets.
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I can't seem to find anything on Java/Android that's current (uses IntelliJ 13 etc). Everything seems to be either very old (2011-2012), and either the UI has changed, or they don't use the UI Designer etc
I'm not a total noob to programming, I have somewhat decent experience in C# & Windows Forms, and would love something that can throw me into Java for Android that's UP TO DATE.
Thanks.
If you have decent experience in C#/WinForms, you just need a good Android book, not IntelliJ/UI Designer tutorials… I recommend the excellent BigNerdRanch book. They make probably the best iOS books and the Android offers excellent patterns. With your experience, adapting to IntelliJ should be a breeze, in part because the IDE doesn't force you to do anything. In fact, if you're starting, just use Android Studio (is IntelliJ anyway).
The UP-TO-DATE part consists in always using Fragments, understanding the SDK pieces where you have to consider older devices (if that's your scope), making good use of different layouts for different resolutions, etc.
There's no such thing as Visual Studio Designer. (There is, but it doesn't work the same way). I recommend you read the official android documentation about UI with utmost care since it's the core of Android UI. For the most part, you will tweak your UI from the "XML" instead of the UI designer, which you can use to "see how it looks" or if "makes sense" but trust me, as intimidating as it sounds, it's actually not rocket science and you get used to it relatively fast.
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I am currently trying to decide between using JOGL and JMonkeyEngine on a project so I would like to learn a bit about the basics of each and decide which one I prefer. Does anyone have any books or web resources to recommend for learning how to use each one? I really prefer stuff that gives a lot of detailed information and examples that use good style over brief online tutorials with poor quality code examples. Official documentation is always good, but I haven't yet found it for either. JMonkeyEngine says that it has complete documentation but I haven't yet located it on their website. Any information would be appreciated.
I should probably mention that I have never used OpenGL before. If I go with JOGL I will need to learn all of the OpenGL basics, so I also need good resources on OpenGL if the JOGL resources don't go into full detail on it.
Updated:
jMonkeyEngine 3 Beginner's Guide
jMonkeyEngine 3 Cookbook
I am in the jMonkey Core Team, albeit not as a programmer.
For starters, if you're considering JOGL, I hope you're looking at JOGL2 by JogAmp, and not the old abandoned one over at Java.net. In terms of use, JOGL and jME are two different things. JOGL, like LWJGL that jME (and Minecraft, to name one) is based on, only eases you into the bare essentials, mainly OpenGL. It means even more freedom, but you will be spending a large amount of time making the "bare bones" of your game before you get to flesh it out with real gameplay features.
jMonkeyEngine, the latest jME3 especially, is designed with intermediate developers in mind, not by means of limitations but with a gradual learning curve and a whole lot of game-specific features built in.
/takes salesman hat off
Our wiki is located at jmonkeyengine.org/wiki/doku.php. Even if you're more used to Eclipse, I strongly recommend using jMonkeyPlatform (the jME3 SDK) for all your jMonkey development, as it comes with a lot of tools that we just couldn't put into the engine core.
As for books, I don't believe there is one, for either. Our main doc writer is working on a contract with Packt though. The final "jMonkeyEngine 3 Beginner's Guide" book is expected late 2011 or early 2012.
I can't speak for JOGL (though I figure they'd say the same), but if you have any more questions regarding jMonkeyEngine I suggest you come visit our forum.
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I want to develop a game and I am at a beginner level.
When I searched for game engines on Google a long list was returned (e.g. Delta 3D, Panda 3D)
Then I looked at wikipedia and it also showed a very large list.
I am not sure which engine to choose.
Please suggest a good game engine and some good tutorial or a good ebook.
I am experienced in C++, QT4, Java and Python(at very initial level).
If the game engine supports Linux platform then I will be very happy.
You should check out OGRE3D. It's totally cross-platform and it's a commercial quality game engine- for example, the indie game Torchlight uses OGRE3D and it was a huge success.
Asuming you are looking at 3D, I'd personally recommend jMonkeyEngine.
It's well designed, open source, has great performance, very easy to use (for a 3D engine...) and under active development.
Whatever you choose then good luck - just be aware that you have a long journey ahead if you want to actually successfully develop a 3D game :-)
Java:
jMonkeyEngine
Python:
pygame (though not really a game engine)
For Linux you can look at the Cube which you can download from here.
Since you are a beginner, I suggest you look at linear algebra. A very good source for this is the Khan Academy. That you will be in a much better position to evaluate the needs you have for a game-engine.
Most all of the code for Quake engine, but not the content, has been made public. So you can play around with that engine to see if it's up to you specifications (the Quake 1, Quake 2, and Quake 3 engines have all been released). Quake 1, 2, and 3 all support the Linux platform.
Also, while the Source Engine isn't open source, a great deal of the source code is available through the Source SDK. It's very easy to modify and you should definitely consider working with it. However, Source is Windows and Mac only.
This resource deals with the Quake 3 engine and is a bit outdated, but I'm sure it'll suit you just fine.
You may wish to qualify your question with what sort of game you're trying to build. Not all game engines are created equal for this :)
So, just for brevity's sake, if you are after building a 2D game, the Gluon game creation and distribution framework ( http://gluon.gamingfreedom.org/ ) may well be the sort of thing you're looking for. Also because it's built using Qt, with which you mention you are already familiar.
If you're looking for 2D, then the GLib engine (theglibengine.wordpress.com) is probably a good start. I must warn you though, it's new and still a bit buggy. It's written Java. For 3D, I'd recommend JMonkeyEngine (for NetBeans) or Ardor3D (for Eclipse).
PLIB is a useful engine for Linux users. It uses a program called OpenGL to operate, so you may need that first, and it's a tiny bit complicated to install, but there are tutorials on that and on C+++ script writing. Perfect 3D engine for Linux.
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I am looking into game programming in Java to see if it is feasible. When googling for it I find several old references to Java2D, Project Darkstar (Sun's MMO-server) and some books on Java game programming. But alot of the information seems to be several years old.
So the question I am asking, is anyone creating any games in Java SE 1.5 or above?
If so, what frameworks are used and are there any best practices or libraries available?
there is the excellent open source 3d engine called jMonkey (http://www.jmonkeyengine.com) which is being used for a few commercial projects as well as hobby developers...
there is also at a lower level the lwjgl library which jmonkeyengine is built on which is a set of apis to wrap opengl as well as provide other game specific libs...
http://www.javagaming.org/ is a good source for up-to-date information.
Another framework not mentioned yet is Xith3D
I haven't directly done any game programming but some scene-demo coding and have found that JOGL is really a quite nice framework to work with. It's Java OpenGL so it has a rich 3D functionality and i do believe there are some open source graphic engines done for it aswell.
Also check Pulp core - deals with the most common problems facing Java gaming.
Despite the odd name ( pretty sure he's talking about the soft drink...), this site has loads of resources and examples games both 2D and 3D. Coke and Code
As an update, a couple of the JMonkeyEngine guys have forked that project to create Ardor3d, a new version of which was recently released, so its still under active development. Project Darkstar is also still actively developed. Indeed DarkMMO an opensource example Darkstar game is being currently refactored to use the latest version of both Darkstar and Ardor3d.
GTGE (www.goldenstudios.or.id) is an excellent 2D Java Game Library, with tutorials and an extensive API. It has gone open-source in its latest version, and the source can be downloaded, browsed, etc. at gtge.googlecode.com.
As mentioned by all others in this topic, there are plenty of excellent libraries/engines available for building games in Java.
Game programming in Java is definitely feasible. Keep in mind though that, as with any other language, getting real-time performance will always take some effort. I wrote a small article about my experiences with using Java for our 3D breakout game 'Caromble!'. It is mainly about the steps we had to take to get our game running smoothly.
http://www.caromble.com/2013/05/java-game-programming/
I've made a list of a bunch of tutorials that should be of help
I like to code games a bit in my free time. I use a library called slick2d which makes programming the back-end a lot easier. For example, you can copy/paste the example 'main' class file from the Slick2d Wiki and you have your game loop as well as the Update() and Render() methods all ready to go.
Slick 2d is based on LWGJL and uses it to load images and do other cool things with OpenGL. There is also a bunch of helpful topics at: http://www.java-gaming.org/