Learning Libgdx Game Development
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Features of Libgdx 0.97

Since the release of Libgdx Version 0.1 back in March 2010, a lot of work has been contributed in order to improve this library. The latest stable release of Libgdx is version 0.97 from November 2012, which we are going to use throughout this book.

Here is the list of features taken from the official website (http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/features.html):

Graphics

  • Rendering through OpenGL ES 1.x and 2.0 on all platforms
  • Custom OpenGL ES 2.0 bindings for Android 2.0 and above
  • Low-level OpenGL helpers:
    • Vertex arrays and vertex buffer objects
    • Meshes
    • Textures
    • Framebuffer objects (GLES 2.0 only)
    • Shaders, integrating easily with meshes
    • Immediate mode rendering emulation
    • Simple shape rendering
    • Automatic software or hardware mipmap generation
    • ETC1 support (not available in JavaScript backend)
    • Automatic handling of OpenGL ES context loss that restores all textures, shaders, and other OpenGL resources
  • High-level 2D APIs:
    • Custom CPU side bitmap manipulation library
    • Orthographic camera
    • High-performance sprite batching and caching, and handling OpenGL ES 1.x and 2.0 differences transparently
    • Texture atlases with whitespace stripping support, which are either generated offline or online
    • Bitmap fonts (does not support complex scripts like Arabic or Chinese), which are either generated offline or loaded from TTF files (unsupported in JavaScript backend)
    • 2D Particle system
    • TMX tile map support
    • 2D scene-graph API
    • 2D UI library, based on scene-graph API, and fully skinable
  • High-level 3D APIs:
    • Perspective camera
    • Decal batching for 3D billboards or particle systems
    • Basic loaders for Wavefront OBJ and MD5
    • Work in progress: MD2, Ogre XML and FBX support, and 3D rendering API with materials and lighting system

Audio

  • Streaming music and sound effect playback for WAV, MP3, and OGG
  • Direct access to audio device for PCM sample playback and recording (unsupported in JavaScript backend)
  • Decoders for OGG and MPG3 formats (unsupported in JavaScript backend)
  • Pitch shifting, time stretching, and playback rate modification (unsupported in JavaScript backend)

Input Handling

  • Using abstractions for mouse and touchscreen, keyboard, accelerometer, and compass.
  • Gesture detector: detects taps, panning, flinging, and pinch zooming.
  • Gdx remote: to control your desktop application via your Android phone. Useful to test multi-touch gestures while debugging your desktop application.

File I/O

  • Filesystem abstraction for all platforms
  • Read-only filesystem emulation for JavaScript backend
  • Binary file support for JavaScript backend
  • Preferences for lightweight setting storage

Math and Physics

  • Matrix, vector, and quaternion classes. Matrix and vector operations are accelerated via native C code where possible.
  • Bounding shapes and volumes.
  • Frustum class, for picking and culling.
  • Catmull-Rom splines.
  • Common interpolators.
  • Concave polygon triangulation.
  • Intersection and overlap testing.
  • JNI wrapper for Box2D physics. It is so awesome that other engines use it as well.
  • Experimental JNI Wrapper for bullet physics.

Utilities

  • Custom collections with primitive support
  • JSON writer and reader with POJO (de-)serialization support
  • XML writer and reader

Tools

  • Gdx Setup UI for easy project setup
  • Particle editor
  • Texture packer
  • Bitmap font generator
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