WHAT TO CHOOSE for Android Game Development:- canvas or OpenGL or LibGDX or Game Engines!!

Android Game Development - WHAT TO CHOOSE

Canvas or OpenGL or LibGDX or Game Engines!!

Developing games on android is not straight forward. You need to be very specific about what you are going to develop, what are the content of it and what are the requirement for it. Game can be developed from all these but everyone has its own limitation.  

As I am a java and android developer and developed some games in java and android with simple logic(Graphics lib. for java and Canvas for android) I had concluded some points.

• If graphics are heavy than your game FPS may jitter even though you have proper architecture, but can be solved from accurate and efficient algorithm.
• Rendering too much graphics can be tedious task.
• There should be proper architecture of everything.
• Efficient and best algorithm should be there.
• Application manageability depends on how you develop it.

Canvas

It is a predefined class in android sdk. Android application can draw things on screen using this class.

java.lang.Object
↳	android.graphics.Canvas

means Object class is the parent class of canvas class. This class hold the "draw" calls. It can draw anything like rectangle, circle, bitmap image, etc. To draw anything some basic components is needed which are mentioned below:-

• Paint object(to give color and style to drawing)
• Bitmap to hold the pixels
• Canvas to receive draw calls(drawing on Bitmap)
• Drawing primitive(path, text, etc.)

How to use it please check android developer documentation.

OpenGL

It is the environment to develop 2D and 3D graphics. It gives the high visual quality and performance. It is cross platform environment.

OpenGl can process image data as well as geometric data.

LibGDX

It is the free game development framework, also it is open source. It is written in Java programming language with some components written in C and C++ to increase the performance. It is the cross platform framework. It can be used desktop application and also for android also.

However this framework is written in java, so the compiled bytecode is language dependent and can be used in any JVM. It main focus was to ease the simplicity and increase the performance.

Game Engine 

It is the tool for fast development of the 2D and 3D games. It is the software framework to develop the mobile and desktop games. The core functionality of the game engine are:-

• rendering(for 2D and 3D graphics)
• Physics(collision detection)
• Sounds
• Artificial Intelligence
• Networking
• Memory management and many more.....

It makes the portability and reusability of the code. There are so many game engines in the market right now, one can choose as per its convenience. Some popular Game Engines are:-

• UNITY
• UNREAL
• RENDERWARE
• X-RAY

WHAT TO CHOOSE!!

The choice is based on some factors like how much time is available, availability of resources, quality of product and many more. after considering all these points one should choose accordingly.

But my personal advice would be Game Engine as you can do so much in less time and no heavy programming skill is needed. Not because of less programming but the quality of content is far more good and manageability is easy. If one wants to develop the game from basic logic, one can to understand how things happen but if they want to build heavy game with simple libraries it will be surely very difficult. So, it is better to choose game engine.

I personally prefer the UNITY game engine as it is easy to learn and implement. Others are also good but I hadn't used them. Tutorials for all these are available online.

GAME ENGINE would be good option.  

How to get Resolution of android device during runtime

How to get Resolution of android device during runtime

Getting Resolution of the android screen is one of the important aspect when application is to be made for different resolution devices.

So, in order to get the resolution of the device there is predefined library(Display Metrics) in android sdk. You just need to call the method provided by it. The methods are mentioned below.

 DisplayMetrics DM = new DisplayMetrics();  
 getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getMetrics(DM);  

This DM object have the information about no. of pixels in height and width and density of the screen. To get these information Call following method:-

For no. of pixels in length

 DM.heightPixels;  

For no. of pixels in width

 DM.widthPixels;  

For Density of Screen

 DM.densityDpi;  

This information is used frequently in code so it is better to make a wrapper class of this and add some basic functions in it. The custom Wrapper class is defined below.

Wrapper Class for DM object

Firstly you have to pass the DM object to this class's constructor.

 DisplayMetrics DM = new DisplayMetrics();  
 getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getMetrics(DM);  
 ScreenResolution SR = new ScreenResolution(DM);  

Now create the custom class named as ScreenResolution:-

 import android.util.DisplayMetrics;

  
 public class ScreenResolution {  
   public static DisplayMetrics dm;  
   public ScreenResolution(DisplayMetrics dm){  
     this.dm=dm;  
   }  
   public static int getHeight(){  
     return dm.heightPixels;  
   }  
   public static int getWidth(){  
     return dm.widthPixels;  
   }  
   public static int getDensity(){  
     return dm.densityDpi;  
   }  
   public static int percent_of_width(int param){  
     return ((param*(dm.widthPixels))/100);  
   }  
   public static int percent_of_height(int param){  
     return ((param*(dm.heightPixels))/100);  
   }  
 }  

This class should be placed in custom Package. This class is beneficial in storing and getting the information about the screen's resolution.

ENJOY  DEVELOPING!!