Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
plication you are working on inside the current running device, so it will save
you some time having the Virtual Device already running!
These are the basic steps to create a new project and launch an application on a
Virtual Device with Eclipse. The creation of a working app is beyond the scope of
this preparatory chapter on the Android platform, but we will come back with more
details in the later chapters of the topic.
Eclipse versus Intellij
Eclipse is not the only possible choice to develop games for Android. Among the
others, Intellij can be considered the main competitor of Eclipse, which mainly works
with Java.
Eclipse offers a larger number of plugins and supports multiple coding languages,
because it is easier to extend, compared to Intellij. When working on specific new
technologies, it is very likely that if a plugin exists, it will be an Eclipse plugin.
On the other hand, when dealing with completion of code and assistance, Intellij is
definitely better (and faster) than Eclipse. Especially for rookie developers, Intellij can
give you a hand improving your code and offers a friendlier user interface. The learn-
ing curve is smoother and developing with Intellij generally feels easier and more
natural.
From a performance point of view, Eclipse works better than Intellij. Projects open
faster and they are handled more efficiently, especially very large ones.
To make a general statement, Intellij is easier to use, thanks to a more user friendly
user interface, while Eclipse is more versatile, thanks to a larger number of available
plugins and a stronger community behind it.
A last thing to consider: Intellij provides a full functional 30 day trial version, and then
a license is required for commercial purposes, while Eclipse is an open source pro-
ject and thus, its license is totally cost free.
