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Libgdx Cross-platform Game Development Cookbook
Libgdx Cross-platform Game Development Cookbook

Libgdx Cross-platform Game Development Cookbook: Harness LibGDX to create cross-platform 2D games with more than 75 practical recipes covering everything from AI to building LibGDX Bitmap fonts

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Libgdx Cross-platform Game Development Cookbook

Chapter 2. Working with 2D Graphics

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

  • Texture rendering with SpriteBatch
  • More effective rendering with regions and atlases
  • Taking advantage of Libgdx sprites
  • Rendering sprite-sheet-based animations
  • Understanding orthographic cameras
  • Using ShapeRenderer for debug graphics
  • Handling multiple screen sizes with viewports

Introduction

Games are interactive experiences that provide feedback to the player mainly through visual elements and audio cues. As a result, rendering becomes one of the most important pillars games are built upon. This chapter will take us on a journey through the basics of the Libgdx 2D graphics API.

You will learn how to efficiently render both static and animated sprites and handle the view with orthographic cameras. Moreover, we will present a series of solutions on how to deal with different screen sizes and resolutions, a very common problem when targeting tablets and phones.

Texture rendering with SpriteBatch

A texture is a bitmap image that gets applied to a surface through mapping. Rendering textures on the screen will be our first step in getting to know the Libgdx 2D graphics API. Once you learn a few simple operations with textures, you will be able to build relatively complex scenes for your games.

To illustrate the procedure, we are going to make use of a friendly caveman, who we will show at different positions, sizes, and orientations.

Getting ready

You need the samples projects to follow this recipe, so make sure you already have them in your Eclipse workspace. You will find the caveman texture in data/caveman.png, inside the data folder in the Android project.

How to do it…

The code for this recipe is hosted in the SpriteBatchSample class, which has the classic methods of an ApplicationListener interface implementation. Note that only the most relevant pieces of code are shown in this recipe as snippets; you can, however, study the full source...

More effective rendering with regions and atlases

Creating Texture objects from different image files and rendering them with SpriteBatch is the most straightforward way of building scenes with Libgdx. However, it is far from being the most efficient one. Games are real-time, performance-critical applications, and writing efficient systems becomes even more important when dealing with resource-limited platforms such as tablets, phones, or browsers.

Surely drawing a handful of individual images is not going to make a massive impact when running the game on a high-end phone with a dedicated GPU. However, the landscape can rapidly change the second we add different backgrounds, dozens of different characters on screen, particle effects, and so on.

Luckily enough, it is fairly simple to set up our assets and rendering process so that it does the job amazingly fast. The key concept here is drawing thousands of little chunks from a massive texture is preferable than a few individual images. We...

Taking advantage of Libgdx sprites

The Texture and TextureRegion objects have proven sufficient to render 2D game worlds, but Libgdx also offers the Sprite class to make our lives more enjoyable. The Sprite class is nothing less than a glorified TextureRegion, adding state properties such as color, position, scale, and rotation.

For this recipe's example, we have taken the jungle scene in TextureAtlasSample and added some modifications so we can play around with sprites. To begin with, Mr. Caveman will constantly follow the mouse. Whenever the user touches the screen or performs a left-click, the dinosaur will acquire a new color tint. Finally, the caveman will rotate upon scrolling and vary its size when scrolling while holding the right mouse button.

Getting ready

As always, import the sample projects into your Eclipse workspace.

How to do it…

As you will see in just a moment, sprites are extremely easy to use. Please focus your attention on SpriteSample.java. Besides the typical...

Rendering sprite-sheet-based animations

So far, we have seen how to render textures and regions of an atlas using Libgdx. Obviously, you can move textures around over time to produce a sense of motion. However, your characters will not come to life until they are properly animated. Not only should they go from one side of the screen to the other, but they should also seem like they are walking, running, or jumping according to their behavior.

Typically, we refer to characters physically moving in the game world as external animation, while we use the term internal animation to talk about their body movement (for example, lifting an arm).

In this recipe, we will see how to implement sprite-sheet-based animation using mechanisms provided by Libgdx. We will do so by populating our previous jungle scene with animated versions of the same characters. A sprite sheet is nothing more than a texture atlas containing all the frames that conform a character's animation capabilities. Think of it...

Introduction


Games are interactive experiences that provide feedback to the player mainly through visual elements and audio cues. As a result, rendering becomes one of the most important pillars games are built upon. This chapter will take us on a journey through the basics of the Libgdx 2D graphics API.

You will learn how to efficiently render both static and animated sprites and handle the view with orthographic cameras. Moreover, we will present a series of solutions on how to deal with different screen sizes and resolutions, a very common problem when targeting tablets and phones.

Texture rendering with SpriteBatch


A texture is a bitmap image that gets applied to a surface through mapping. Rendering textures on the screen will be our first step in getting to know the Libgdx 2D graphics API. Once you learn a few simple operations with textures, you will be able to build relatively complex scenes for your games.

To illustrate the procedure, we are going to make use of a friendly caveman, who we will show at different positions, sizes, and orientations.

Getting ready

You need the samples projects to follow this recipe, so make sure you already have them in your Eclipse workspace. You will find the caveman texture in data/caveman.png, inside the data folder in the Android project.

How to do it…

The code for this recipe is hosted in the SpriteBatchSample class, which has the classic methods of an ApplicationListener interface implementation. Note that only the most relevant pieces of code are shown in this recipe as snippets; you can, however, study the full source. First of...

More effective rendering with regions and atlases


Creating Texture objects from different image files and rendering them with SpriteBatch is the most straightforward way of building scenes with Libgdx. However, it is far from being the most efficient one. Games are real-time, performance-critical applications, and writing efficient systems becomes even more important when dealing with resource-limited platforms such as tablets, phones, or browsers.

Surely drawing a handful of individual images is not going to make a massive impact when running the game on a high-end phone with a dedicated GPU. However, the landscape can rapidly change the second we add different backgrounds, dozens of different characters on screen, particle effects, and so on.

Luckily enough, it is fairly simple to set up our assets and rendering process so that it does the job amazingly fast. The key concept here is drawing thousands of little chunks from a massive texture is preferable than a few individual images. We will...

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Description

If you want to make cross-platform games without the hassle and dangers of writing platform-specific code, or If you are a game programmer who may have some experience with Java and you want to learn everything you need to know about Libgdx to produce awesome work, this is the book for you. To take full advantage of the recipes in this book, you are expected to be familiar with java with good game programming knowledge.

What you will learn

  • Wield the power of the 2D graphics API; get to grips with textures, atlases, particles, fonts, and shaders
  • Manage input from different devices, including touch, keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and accelerometer
  • Increase player immersion with the Libgdx audio API
  • Quickly design maps with an editor and load them directly into your game
  • Exploit the 2D stage features to build great user interfaces
  • Create amazing physics simulations with Box2D
  • Master the deployment process and reach a wide audience

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Oct 29, 2014
Length: 516 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781783287291
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Product Details

Publication date : Oct 29, 2014
Length: 516 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781783287291
Tools :

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Table of Contents

14 Chapters
1. Diving into Libgdx Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Working with 2D Graphics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Advanced 2D Graphics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Detecting User Input Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Audio and File I/O Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Font Rendering Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Asset Management Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. User Interfaces with Scene2D Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. The 2D Maps API Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Rigid Body Physics with Box2D Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Third-party Libraries and Extras Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
12. Performance and Optimizations Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
13. Giving Back Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.8
(18 Ratings)
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4 star 16.7%
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Edoardo Pona Oct 22, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Awesome book! Sometimes a little challenging to understand but really helpful. I recommend a bit of experience with java, and maybe also a little knowledge with libgdx first, to get you going better!
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Richard Porteous Jul 30, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
A very good book on libgdx. Starting to show its age very fast as all detailed programming books do. Had no difficulty getting this to work with Android studio and the latest version of libgdx. Minor corrections needed
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Krasimir Dec 15, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
First I should mention that it took me a while to decide whether I should start using AndEngine or Libgdx. After serious research my conclusions were that Libgdx is the better option. The reasons are that it’s still being updated and code testing is much faster. At this point the learning resources for Libgdx are basically two – the tutorials on their website and this book. Currently there is only one book more which is said to be outdated. As a beginner I decided to start learning from the book first because books tend to have some structure. And I must say that the book is indeed very well structured and there are a lot of useful details. At first I was expecting to have some problems with comprehending the material but the authors did a very good job in explaining with layman’s terms. If I have to be honest - you can actually feel the amount of work spent on this book. While going through this book, I learned how to work with Libgdx’s 2D API and create complex 2D effects such as particles, shaders, etc. Now I also know how to set up nice background music in my game and how to create a good looking text. There is a lot of material covered on the topic of optimisation which is crucial for smooth running on phones. I think that the tip of the iceberg is the chapter about third-party libraries and extras. It is very useful because it covers the most popular “goodies” used with Libgdx. This includes – multilingual support, skeleton animation, lighting and software architecture. This book is truly a “game development cookbook” because it explains everything needed to build a professionally looking game. I would like to thank the whole team and especially the authors for their amazing work. I recommend this book.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Squid Nov 05, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Great book. I have 2 apps in the play store with this book's help. HOWEVER as of writing it is a tad dated. There are new ways to setup the library. Some framework has changed. ESPECIALLY Since RoboVM has died (which allows you to port to iPhone - all the alternatives are workarounds I found them cumbersome). If you are pushing for Android/Desktop this book is great. I would recommend Cocos2Dx or SDL or Cordova if you want to do fully cross-platform development.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Justin Ayekay Feb 14, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This is a fantastic resource!
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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