iOS Question LibGDX for iOS?

[Spright]

Is there something similar to LibGDX for iOS?

I'm currently developing an app for Android now, where I will partly rely on LibGDX, and I'm now thinking what to do if I want to go iOS later.

I do love libGDX but I don't use much of the functionalities I just use it to get FBO's, Matrix and a Viewport and some the usual control that you would want out of 2D textures. No high level actors, scenes or 3d features needed. In other words I just use it as a way to help me handle opengl.

What can give me the same experience in performance on iOS? Any suggestions? TIA!

 

[ilan]

currently we don't have a libgdx library for ios. we do have x2 that is cross platform library created by @Erel and also includes box2d framework and also support Tiled.
we also have a wrap of Spritekit called iSpritkit that has been wrapped by @JanPRO.

there are many games created for ios using iSpritekit so you may have a look at the "Share your creation" forum.
as someone that created games with Libgdx and iSpritekit i love iSpritekit more and it is very powerful!

 

[Spright]

I have tried x2 a bit and i could not get the same performance at all on Android as I could with libGDX and im afraid it might be the same on ios. Sprite kit has a low performance as it is from my experience, but maybe you use any standard opengl commands for iOS (and they will be mapped to metal or something)?

 

[ilan]

I dont know what kind of game you want to make but i agree that from performance view libgdx is some levels above x2 but spritekit is in my opinion very powerful and i always get 60 frames even on old iphones like iphone 5s

you can have a look at my games i created with spritekit and see the performance.

 

[Spright]

That sounds interesting. X2 exist for Android as well, it's standard part of the language? Have you been able to compare Android at some point to get a feeling of it? I don't have a Apple development account yet so I can't test on my iPhone just yet, I'm eager to try things myself.

I mainly need FBO's and shaders I guess, it does not matter how I get them so anything allows that would be amazing. I don't need amazing results but recently I got surprised by LibGDX bc It gives me 4000 8x8 sprites 256 128x128 sprites easily on any Android phone from 2013 and forward. That is great stuff to work with for me. I would love to have something similair for Apple now

 

[Spright]

I want to add my previous experience with SpriteKit have been that I was able to easily get around 300 or so big sprites for my game but absolutely no more. It seem to be very actor-inspired and have higher abstractions but it does not seem that it wants to be used like a "lower" level API at all. Does this sound like what you got out of SpriteKit?

 

[ilan]

That sounds interesting. X2 exist for Android as well, it's standard part of the language? Have you been able to compare Android at some point to get a feeling of it? I don't have a Apple development account yet so I can't test on my iPhone just yet, I'm eager to try things myself.

I mainly need FBO's and shaders I guess, it does not matter how I get them so anything allows that would be amazing. I don't need amazing results but recently I got surprised by LibGDX bc It gives me 4000 8x8 sprites 256 128x128 sprites easily on any Android phone from 2013 and forward. That is great stuff to work with for me. I would love to have something similair for Apple now

4000 sprites ? it sounds a lot to me. it is very important to be very efficient when creating games. loading at the game start 4000 sprites will need a lot of memory. there are many ways to reduce memory like loading sprites only when needed and release old sprites that are no more needed like when you complete levels and new levels are loaded.
i have a nice game i created in libgdx that also uses a lot of sprites and box2d bodies but not 4000
it is called Pixel Knight (video: here)

Does this sound like what you got out of SpriteKit?

i have very good experience with spritekit it is powerful enough for the games i have created and what i liked most is the logic of that framework where you work with nodes and everything is connected to each other so you dont need to take care of physics and rendering separately like in libgdx. it was very hard for me when i started working with spritekit after working only with libgdx. i do agree that you have much more flexibility with libgdx and freedom but again creating simple games for ios i do recommend spritekit.

some of my games i created with spritekit: Physics2d - Space Defender - Rapid Cube (and many more)
as you can see those are simple games that doesnot need a very powerful game engine.

what kind of game are you working on?

EDIT: btw, i have not made any games for a long time because it is very time consuming and i did not make a good revenue from it so low motivation for making games

 

[Spright]

The 4000 sprites I use mainly for tiles mostly and other things like FBO's. I take everything from a single 128x128 sprite sheet and I never re-load anything so the resources are almost non-existing. I'm thinking of adding a few more so it is very sparse on resources and still you have amazing flexibility and that is what i like.

Mostly I do things manually so I don't use the high-level API's of the frameworks/engines. I see the beauty of doing that but in some cases I like to do things myself. In this project I was trying to use LibGDX's tileengine but I choose not to at the end as It didn't matter much it was equally fast as what I am doing.

All in all LibGDX is an exciting framework despite it has existed for so long IMOH it is still one of the best ones.
But right now I'm all pragmatic and I use whatever I need to use. I'm open for suggestions

I'm working on an arcade game right now that is very retro which is a genre that I love personally so i have put a lot of effort into it.
I agree with you that games take a lot of time to make but I really enjoy the quality I get on the Android perfect 60 fps on older devices and no jitter. I wanted that old arcade feeling I that is what I have found.

When you read this forum you see a lot of people having issues with slowdowns when they add sound so I might get problems later on..
Touch is a problem on Android too, but Apple is way easier when it comes to touch (I'm talking about lag and missed touchevents).

 

[ilan]

I'm working on an arcade game right now that is very retro which is a genre that I love personally so i have put a lot of effort into it

me too, i love retro games and i always get inspired by them. it is amazing how they could archive such cool games on low end computers like the c64 (that i had when i was 6-7 years old)

When you read this forum you see a lot of people having issues with slowdowns when they add sound so I might get problems later on..

never had an issue with sound when using libgdx!

Touch is a problem on Android too, but Apple is way easier when it comes to touch (I'm talking about lag and missed touchevents).

i could not see any difference between using libgdx on android and spritekit on ios devices so i cannot confirm that either. i had no issues with touches or sound in my games.

can you share what game you are working on? it is interesting.
at the top of my list of games i wanna re-make is "Bruce Lee for C64"


watching this video brings memories back ?

 

[moore_it]

me too, i love retro games and i always get inspired by them. it is amazing how they could archive such cool games on low end computers like the c64 (that i had when i was 6-7 years old)

never had an issue with sound when using libgdx!

i could not see any difference between using libgdx on android and spritekit on ios devices so i cannot confirm that either. i had no issues with touches or sound in my games.

can you share what game you are working on? it is interesting.
at the top of my list of games i wanna re-make is "Bruce Lee for C64"


watching this video brings memories back ?

I've loved this game !

 

[Spright]

me too, i love retro games and i always get inspired by them. it is amazing how they could archive such cool games on low end computers like the c64 (that i had when i was 6-7 years old)

never had an issue with sound when using libgdx!

i could not see any difference between using libgdx on android and spritekit on ios devices so i cannot confirm that either. i had no issues with touches or sound in my games.

can you share what game you are working on? it is interesting.
at the top of my list of games i wanna re-make is "Bruce Lee for C64"


watching this video brings memories back ?

Funny you should mention Bruce Lee for the C64, I can't show any screenshots just yet but I wild gladly talk about the game.
It's an action adventure based on the same style that Zorro for the C64 used, it's not too far off the genre that Bruce lee belongs to they even came out around the same time if I'm not mistaken.

It's the typical adventure game from that era, where you pick up things, you solve puzzles room by room and there's also a few minigames thrown in as well. Other parts of the game is more action-like and has scrolling. I try to keep it small so it's not that big as it might sound right now I'm struggling with getting the physics right.

I'm glad to hear that you had no problems with touch and sound. We'll see how it goes!

 

[ilan]

Zorro for the C64

just checked that game out on youtube. i didnot knew it exists but it looks really cool and very similar to bruce lee (how the character jumps, fall down,...).
in my opinion such kind of game could easily be done without any game engine at all.
i did many cool game with the core library alone. on android you should not get any issues at all and on ios you need to do it just in a clever way to get a good result,
like using multiple layers and draw only stuff that changes. background is static so draw only chars, bullets, ...

you can check out some games i did without game engine i even posted the source for them:

Breakout
Paper Paratroopers
Lunar Lander
Fruit Ninja

and many more. Those game are not using any game engine and they work fine (tested on middle range and new devices)