Why Android?

I’ve been creating games using flash/actionscript for a while now, but have really wanted to get started with android game development, since it’s an open source platform, the sky is the limit to how much you can learn about it.

The devices are usually fairly non-restrictive, being able to load custom roms, install any available software — even not directly through the market, being more practical (using internal storage as storage, not needing to install bloatware to connect to a computer), as well as having many more choices in hardware, since there is such a wide diversity of available mobile phones.

All in all, Android is very non-restrictive and flexible to it’s users, as well as it’s developers, and the market is supposed to be much easier to upload your app on, without getting turned down without a reason. It also caters more towards free apps (with ads), which is what I had wanted to offer, to allow everyone to be able to play my games.

Why LibGDX?

I have read a few android programming books, and most go into quite a bit of detail about application programming, but very little about OpenGL, not to mention I hadn’t done much programming using multiple separate threads in the past.

LibGDX takes care off pretty much all of the low-level stuff for you, so you can focus on game programming, or basic engine programming, and not about techniques for loading different image and music types, creating and handling multiple threads, or creating OpenGL surfaces to render 2d bitmaps on to.

Using it also does not take away any of the control you have, if you wanted to or needed to program lower level stuff, such as creating surfaces and 3d objects using OpenGL. Thus, it provides an excellent platform to get started with without having to worry about creating everything from scratch yourself, but also allows you to create things later on when you need them.

And for super-icing on the cake, it is specifically made for creating games, and it also allows you to compile and test using native Java on your computer before deploying to your android device, which makes debugging and compile time so much faster! No needing to deal with the android emulator for most of your design, unless you wish to, no needing to compile the apk, move it to the SD card, install, open, and finally debug– you can do it all on your computer before deploying to your android device!

So in summary:

• Handles a lot of the stuff that you would normally need to program from scratch, saves you time, as well as allows you to expand it if needed
• Specifically created for games!
• Debug, test and try out your android app without having to rely on having a device/ emulator running almost all the time!
• Open source and free, as well as great forums for support

So Now that you know why it is a great framework to use to develop android games, lets get up and running.
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