Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter
4
Efficient Graphics and
Portability with OpenGL ES
In this chapter, you will learn about portability or multiplatform support in today's mobile
graphics development and also how to use the most common features of Open GL ES
version 3.1. This is the latest version of OpenGL ES when this manuscript was written and
fully supported by the Android SDK version 5.0.1 used in this topic.
Today's organizations have vast amounts of code created for OpenGL on the PC, which is
not compatible with OpenGL ES for mobile devices. The investment can be significant; some
game engines can easily cost millions to develop and take many years of continuous R&D
work. So it is only logical that companies want to leverage that code in mobile platforms.
In the first part of this chapter you will learn some of the challenges of reusing the OpenGL
code built for the PC in your mobile, plus some tricks you can use to save time and cost.
Note
All the code included in this chapter was developed, compiled and tested using Eclipse IDE
for Java Developers instead of Android Studio 1.0.1 since, when this manuscript was written, NDK
and JNI were not supported by Android Studio.
Let's get started.
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