LibGDX Tutorial - Game Development LibGDX Tutorial

Black Dodger,

Τhis is the name of the first game I ever created. It is an arcade 2D game that you can find in Google Play. In the series of tutorials that are to come, I am going to cover as analytically as I can the process that I followed in order to create that game using Libgdx. Hopefully, in the end you will be able to create your own unique game. There are some great tutorials out there but generally, I found some difficulties in the whole process and I thought that it would be great to provide you with all the available solutions. I am in no way an expert game developer. I currently do that as a hobby of mine but I assure you that I am doing my best. I actually studied software and hardware engineering so I knew some fundamentals.

Note;; Black Dodger is not an open - source project, thus we are going to create a very similar game but not exactly the same. In the end, hopefully, you will have gained some necessary skills in order to give your own personal touch to YOUR game.

Working attitude when developing a game

In this post I will try to explain the procedure we are going to follow but first lets just talk about some basic stuff. If you are worried and you are asking yourself;

" Can I do that? Can I create my own game? "

Then I would tell you that it depends. Are you willing to study, do some productive work eating chips and drinking juice (I hate coffee)? Do not forget that we are going to use Libgdx which is a complete engine - well it's more like an open - source game development framework -. This means, for example, that it has a complete physics engine for us. It would take a looooot of work in order to create your own engine and you would most probably need a team for that BUT at least you should try to understand how exactly it works and understand some basic math and physics that are behind it (obviously you don't need to know everything).

 " Is that necessary? " 

No, it's not, but it will make your life easier. And what if some big gaming company hires you in the feature or if you create your own? It's a win - win situation. You just need to start acting.

I personally am very bad at drawing. The graphics and the animation of Black Dodger though, are all created by me. I just started practicing with some key programs (I will list them some other time) and after a trillion years I made it. Actually it was 2 years. Two years to learn how to use Libgdx, draw the graphics and the animations and publish the game. If I were to do that now, it would be much easier and less time consuming. I have been rambling on about all these things, in order to prove that you can learn how to do almost everything (you don't need to be the greatest though) if you just start practicing.

LibGDX Tutorials

There will be 4 different tutorial categories about;

1. How to setup and use some of Libgdx's features, step by step (We will call them How To tutorials).
2. How to solve some problems that almost every developer will have to face, like resolution and aspect ratio independence (We will call them Common Problems tutorials).
3. How to understand a little deeper gaming development (We will call them Understanding tutorials).
4. How to setup ads for your game.

And finally, we will talk about if it's easy to make a living or at least make some money from an Android game. If you don't know what exactly libGDX is then i assure you that with a quick search on Google you can find out a lot details that can help you decide whether you would like to use it for for your game or not.

The ending result will be your OWN game, a mini clone of Black Dodger. The game will even have graphics, animations and will be fully responsive and functional for every device. From there, having learnt all the fundamentals, you will be able to take initiatives and create something unique and hopefully cool and awesome.

Any feedback is welcome, warm up your fingers!