I've just finished designing my fairly simple yet complete game for Android, with menus, multiple views etc. Now I'd like to move on to something more complicated, maybe with OpenGL.
I see people on gamedev.stackexchange using all sorts of game frameworks. What's the advantage of doing that as opposed to doing everything manually in Java, animating sprites myself etc? Does using these frameworks not make my code less portable across iOS and Android?
And should I really be coding in C++/JNI if portability will be a future goal?
Sorry if the question appears obvious, but I'd like to get confirmation from people more experienced than me.
Thanks
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I have a simple mobile game in mind that I would really want to make, but I can't decide on how to start. I would really want to make it run on Android and iOS, but I don't know how to accomplish that. I don't really want to use a game engine like Unity, since the game I have in mind is so simple that it would really be an overkill. The only thing I really need is a canvas to draw some shapes on.
So I was thinking about making it a hybrid app with javascript and Cordova, since I already know javascript and I'm comfortable with the javascript canvas. It's also good because you don't need to re-write code for both platforms, and thus programming will be faster and easier.
Now I am wondering if this is actually a good idea. I've never made a hybrid app before, and I don't really know if it's going to perform well.
I've read that hybrid apps run slower than native apps, but is this really that big of a deal? The game really has to run smooth, since it will be a fast-paced dodger style game.
How much slower are hybrid apps in comparison to native apps, and will it be fast enough for making a very basic 2d game run smoothly? Or are there better alternatives to hybrid, that won't make me have to re-write a lot of code for iOS and Android?
Thanks in advance!
If you've never done any of it before, then you will still have to solve a couple of problems here and there. I think you are not done just by implementing a canvas part. You will still want to add some UI, maybe some ads, in-app purchases, scoreboards etc. These topics are common in game development circles and there are many 3rd party tools to help you out. If you are really serious about game development, I think it is totally worth investing some time into Unity. It will pay back in a long run.
I'm a new Android developer and I need to create an Android application which looks like Apple's App store (on both phone and tablet).
I'm a bit familiar with Native layout designer in Eclipse (ADT) and I find it really hard to design such an amazing UI.
I've searched a lot and I've found some web-based UI frameworks such as Phonegap and Chocolatechip-UI. Are these frameworks capable of designing such apps or not? Or do you suggest something else?
Thnx in advance
This question does not have a right or wrong answer. It really depends on how complex your UI is. How sleek you want it to be.
If your UI is pretty but simple and does not require very complex animations you could go for PhoneGap. however, if you have got very complex UI and want very sleek animations I suggest you use the native APIs.
This however, may change in the near future as web technology is improving really fast :)
I am not familiar with creating android apps by any means. However my company is looking to have an app build up. First they would like to have someone design a custom UI for it. However most apps I use at least all generally have the same core UI look/feel which is something we would like to avoid. I have seen apps though that don't even remotely look like the rest. So I am wondering if theres any place to find out what the basic canvas of an android app looks like . Is there any PSD's anywhere for this? Not one hundred percent sure what I am looking for other than concepts at the moment, but we want to know that our concepts are at the least plausible. So if anyone knows any good resources Id be interested to know.
Not PSDs, but you should take a look at the newly launched Android Design site, especially the Building Blocks section to understand what is available out of the box for you. Pretty much all of the controls you can style pretty extensively if you're willing to put the work into it, but have varying degrees of built-in configurable styling flexibility.
Note that while there's something to be said for ingenuity and being able to stand out from the crowd, there's also the flip side of comfort and usability for the user that comes with a familiar look and feel. If you're looking to come up with your own custom controls, etc. and you're not even familiar with creating Android apps, I hope your company is willing to budget a lot of time for the steep learning curve (the learning curve of Android is not so bad, but adding a lot of custom UI on top of that is not trivial for a first project).
I have seen several posts here about cocos2d-android, so ambition to get more idea on it drag me at coco2ds-android-1 and a good example .
My analysis can not find any significant benefit of using coco2ds instead of usual 2d approach of surfaceView and SurfaceHolder.Callback .
I will be thankful if anybody have expertise over coco2ds-android will guide me about benefits to use it instead of usual gaming approach .
Just by clicking on links starting from the ones in OP, I have came across http://dan.clarke.name/2011/04/how-to-make-a-simple-android-game-with-cocos2d/ - which states the obvious answer you are looking for.
First of all, this is a 2D gaming engine. All of the physics and whatnot effects are just there for you. No need to re-implement from scratch
Secondly, this is actually a port of the iPhone gaming library with the same name - great news if you also plan on porting to iPhone. And thirdly it is open sourced, meaning you can tweak anything accordingly.
I have noticed however that this is a pure java library, so do not expect amazing performance. If performance is critical, google for something NDK based, not SDK based. I could not advise here as gaming is not my thing.
I've been looking over a bunch of 2D Engines for Android development and I'm finding it fairly difficult to decide between all of the options. Many of the engines are no longer being developed and not all of them offer the same features.
The game I am developing will require fairly standard functionality:
Drag and Drop
Graphics Commands Optimized to Handle Low Sprite Count (~20)
Sounds/Music
Taking into account that I won't be creating a super-complex game and that I'm hoping to avoid a lot of the typical hassle with creating a GUI in Java, what plug-in would satisfy my needs in a simple and optimized fashion. So far I have looked into a group of engines including cocos2D, Angle, and various others.
The engine can either be under development or not, so long as it is a complete project.
Sorry if there are any grammar errors or any confusion, I'm up rather late after setting everything up/doing the research.
Many thanks in advance,
Justian M.