LibGDX. Anyone?

[Lt. Smash]

Hey guys!

Anyone ever heard of LibGDX (http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com)?
Since a few months it's my favorite cross-platform game development kit (except for adventure games  ) and I've been able to create some nice (commercial) projects with it.
For example, the iOS version of my Tangram-like game BlockRam Puzzle: https://itunes.apple.com/app/blockram-puzzle/id632783393.

Just wanted to see if there are some other Gdxers out there or other interested people who also find this library pretty cool

[Retro Wolf]

I've been debating whether to learn actionscript or java (I know they have similarities.). This looks very interesting.

[Lt. Smash]

I like Java because of its nice and simple structure (this is true OO), its readability, its extensibility (there are loads of opensource libs out there)...

Of course it's not the super-language for everything. Some say it's slow, some say it's too strict... I say every language has it's purpose; in Java you can at least use the JNI if you need it.

LibGDX is one of the few Java libraries that allow you to code games in 2D and 3D. Although it's not in an 1.x release, it's pretty stable and I've never got any problem.  There are many contributor and if you're missing something you can easily contribute yourself.
I like it that much, because you have control over every aspect of your project. You just need one code base and don't need to make any further modifications to deploy to Windows, Mac, HTML5, Android and iOS. According to some benchmark tests it's even faster than Unity.

[Ryan Timothy B]

I need to bump this because I need to express my new-found love for LibGDX.

It's the funnest thing I've ever used to make a game. Ever! I'm in love. Over a year ago I've used it once before to make a tower defense game but I spent most of that time learning LibGDX that I lost sight of the project, and most importantly, the fun of how easy LibGDX and Java actually are. Now that my brain has dissected what it has learned in the past, I've decided to work on a sweet, small little game (motivation and inspiration from the success of Flappy Birds, yet the gampeplay is nothing like it). It's been just over a week, and the game is nearly at a fully playable state. Which does sound bad, but I've spent most of my time on the game concept and temporary graphics to make sure I'm making the absolute best game. I've scrapped so many game ideas like onscreen buttons for a more intuitive tap the screen approach to fully engage all users; even my 3 year old nephew can play it now.

If making mobile games interests any of you, I highly recommend it - as long as programming doesn't scare you. The initial set up of the project and Eclipse is a little daunting with all the plugins and such you need to install, but you always have Google on your side to guide you through your errors.

Get it. Make some mobile games. I dare you!

[Calin Leafshade]

I've experienced something of a paradigm shift with regards to indie game development over the last year or so.

I used to be very much into heavily structured languages/frameworks like XNA and libgdx. They seemed elegant to me and I really appreciated the structure they provided.

However, a few years ago Jon Blow did a GDC talk in which he basically said "Just get it done". He opined that making games is not like other coding. There is simply too much to get done in a short time period. Usually game code does not need to be maintainable for any length of time and often there is only a single programmer, maybe two. That, in my mind at least, eliminates the need for the heavy structural architecture of frameworks like libgdx and xna and the languages that accompany them.

That's not to say I dislike Java (I do) or C# (I don't). I'm just saying that I don't personally find the rigidity of those environments to be helpful when making a game. I need to do it fast and i need to be flexible in my approach.

With that in mind I recommend some of the more agile game dev tools available.

[Ryan Timothy B]

With that in mind I recommend some of the more agile game dev tools available.

Which do you speak of? Something like Unity?

Anyway, it's just a small game I'm making and LibGDX is so far proving to be the perfect tool for the job. Quick and easy.

[Calin Leafshade]

My personal favourite at the moment is Love (love2d.org).

I like love because it provides you with access to fairly advanced stuff (shaders, the open gl matrix and stuff) while keeping the API super simple and giving you sane defaults for all the stuff you may not need to touch.

I'm not sure what to think of unity. It's kind of a mix of both worlds but i'm not sure if thats a good thing or not. It's *very* structured but also it's quite suited to rapid prototyping. I think though that when making something larger in unity the rapid development aspects kind of fade away. It's easy to make something in unity but making something larger requires that you follow their structural design quite closely which i'm not sure is useful in the long term.

[Khris]

I gave this another try and it's pretty cool. Definitely good to get fast results.
When I tried this several months ago, the HTML5 version was very laggy. That's apparently still the case; the small demo game with the raindrops runs really badly on Chrome, stuttering the entire time.

Ryan, did you test the HTML version? Can you confirm this?

Edit: compiling it for deployment fixed it, mostly.

[Ryan Timothy B]

Nah, I wouldn't be able to confirm anything with HTML5. I initially added the HTML version to my project for the heck of it, but soon learned I was missing a plugin of sorts and couldn't be arsed to learn which I needed. I simply just deleted that from my game package. Not that it would be hard to add it back into it if I ever changed my mind on needing it.

As for it running on an Android device, I can definitely confirm that it runs smooth even on old devices. (Sigh. If only AGS had the programming and graphical features that Java and LibGDX offers)