You're reading from 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

Product type Paperback

Published in Oct 2014

Publisher

ISBN-13 9781783287291

Length 516 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Tools

LibGDX

Concepts

3D Game Development

Table of Contents (15) Chapters

Preface

What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support

1. Diving into Libgdx FREE CHAPTER

Introduction
Setting up a cross-platform development environment
Creating a cross-platform project
Understanding the project structure and application life cycle
Updating and managing project dependencies
Using source control on a Libgdx project with Git
Importing and running the Libgdx official demos

2. Working with 2D Graphics

Introduction
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

3. Advanced 2D Graphics

Introduction
Achieving juicy effects with particles
Frame buffers and image composition
Welcome to the world of shaders
Passing parameters into shader programs
2D depth of field shader
Embedding a Libgdx window into a Java desktop application

4. Detecting User Input

Introduction
Detecting user input via event polling
Detecting user input via event listening
Managing multiple listeners at once
Detecting more complex gestures
Introducing the controllers API
Input mapping for cross-platform development

5. Audio and File I/O

Introduction
Playing short sound effects
Audio streaming for background music
Optimizing audio files to reduce download sizes
Procedural audio generators
Engine sounds with dynamic audio
The 2D space sound system
The first approach to file handling in Libgdx
Using preferences to store game states and options
The XML parsing primer
JSON serialization and deserialization

6. Font Rendering

Introduction
Generating and rendering bitmap fonts
Baking effects into fonts using Hiero
Scaling friendly font rendering with distance fields
Dynamic font effects using distance fields

7. Asset Management

Introduction
Getting to know AssetManager
Asynchronous asset loading
Creating custom asset loaders
Managing groups of assets for bigger games

8. User Interfaces with Scene2D

Introduction
Introducing the Scene2D API
Widget collection overview
Creating a basic menu screen using tables
Skin customization
Creating new widgets

9. The 2D Maps API

Introduction
Creating maps with Tiled and loading them into Libgdx
Adding and querying map metadata
Developing your own map loaders and renderers

10. Rigid Body Physics with Box2D

Introduction
Introducing Box2D
Introducing more complex shapes
Introducing joints
Real-life joints example – bike simulator
Reacting to collisions
Sensors and collision filtering
Querying the world
Building a physics world from level data
Implementing a deferred raycaster
The fixed timestep approach

11. Third-party Libraries and Extras

Introduction
Making libraries compatible with GWT
Managing platform-specific code
Smooth animations with Universal Tween Engine
Dynamic 2D lighting with Box2DLights
Adding support for localization
Finite state machine and messaging
Component-based entity systems with Ashley
Skeletal animations with Spine

12. Performance and Optimizations

Introduction
Profiling your application with VisualVM
Using Libgdx features to avoid garbage collection
Avoiding unnecessary render calls with frustum culling

13. Giving Back

Introduction
Releasing your Libgdx game on desktop
Releasing your Libgdx game on Android
Releasing your Libgdx game on iOS
Releasing your Libgdx game on browsers
Working from sources
Creating a new test for your fresh feature
Sending a pull request on GitHub

Index

Chapter 7. Asset Management

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

Getting to know AssetManager
Asynchronous asset loading
Creating custom asset loaders
Managing groups of assets for bigger games

The rest of the chapter is locked

You're reading from 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

Table of Contents (15) Chapters

Chapter 7. Asset Management

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