Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The Eclipse IDE is an open source project that basically consists of a collection of
plugins that integrate with the platform, to provide a wide range of features. Most of
these plugins are written in Java.
Android Development Tools
(
ADT
) is a plugin for the Eclipse IDE that is designed
to provide a powerful, integrated environment in which to build Android applications.
The ADT plugin for Eclipse is provided with the Android SDK. The SDK is a collection
of tools that allow developing, testing, and debugging applications developed for
Android.
Though the premier code language for Eclipse is Java, Eclipse is a multi-language
environment that allows other languages to be used as well.
If you are an eager C\C++ programmer and prefer to develop your games in native
code language, then the NDK is a very helpful tool set that allows, for example, re-
using already existing code libraries and possibly increasing performance. But such
options have their costs. Generally speaking, native code on Android doesn't always
produce a performance improvement, while it increases the app complexity. So, the
decision whether to use the NDK or not should never be dictated by the assumption
that "I simply prefer programming with C\C++".
Games for Android
When pondering the decision whether to develop a mobile game on Android, there
are two types of device to take into consideration as reference models, based on
their processor (CPU) and Graphic Processing Unit (GPU), the piece of hardware
that specifically takes care of graphics on the display. As we write, there is the HTC
Dream (or G1), the first Android powered phone, which is equipped with
Half Video
Graphics Array
(
HVGA
) screens and average 500 MHz CPUs (low-end). The oth-
er model is the Nexus One, which is equipped with a
Wide Video Graphics Array
(
WVGA
) screen, a faster CPU, and a GPU that support OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware
acceleration (high-end).
Since performance changes very much between the two groups, it is very important
to carefully choose the target device for your game, because games that can scale
between high and low end devices get, obviously, a broader audience.
What follows is a description about how a new Android project is started with Eclipse:
