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I want to start creating games for Android/IOS. I have already created 2D games using XNA and I want to publish them on other platforms even PCs but my highest priority is Mobile platforms. As I said I am familiar with XNA so I need a similar Engine for 2D. It would be great if I could write once and publish on many platforms. Please dont suggest Unity or Unreal. They are not that easy when it comes to 2D.

By similar I mean, for example, how easy to draw a sprite on the screen. Note: I am working on Windows so no Mac suggestions please.

Regards,

Ahmad Baracat
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8 Answers8

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You may also want to consider MonoGame ( https://github.com/mono/MonoGame/ ) as that is also an Open Source, OpenGL implementation of XNA that currently has support for iOS, Android, MacOS X, Windows and recently Linux. It is now all ES 2.0 on the mobile platforms. Our biggest change is that we now support Windows 8, and have a DirectX 11 backend thanks to SharpDX. We now also have initial PlayStation mobile support.

Actually ExEn, is a fork of MonoGame( originally called XNATouch ).

For a list of games on the AppStore or Android Market place and even NaLC, currently using MonoGame look here - http://monogame.codeplex.com/

I hope this helps.

D.

Dominique
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Dominique
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You might want to keep up on the project called ExEn, which has already successfully ported some XNA samples and smaller games to iPhone and Android. It requires relatively little work to port and refactor to these platforms.

Chris C
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  • Is the android implementation done yet, I thought they had just finished raising money for it. Also here is a link to the project home page not to the funding page: http://andrewrussell.net/exen/ – slayton Sep 16 '11 at 19:04
  • I checked it out But first it does not support Android just yet and second I cant find a way to know how to download it and use it. – Ahmad Baracat Sep 16 '11 at 19:16
  • The first public preview (iOS only) is [available here](http://andrewrussell.net/2011/06/exen-public-preview-1/). The second public preview, with Android support, is coming very soon. (Or you could join the pre-release program and start using the Android version right away). – Andrew Russell Sep 19 '11 at 05:24
  • +1 to this, worked great when porting chicks'n'vixens to iOS with it. – meds Sep 19 '11 at 05:40
  • @Bacarat, Android is a very disjointed platform compared to iOS and WP7, so there is some difficulty in the progress of getting the implementation working correctly on all current devices. The project author has already expressed his dislike for the Android OS :P – Chris C Sep 19 '11 at 17:26
  • AFAIK the development on ExEn has been put on ice: http://andrewrussell.net/2012/03/the-future-of-exen/ – Jonas Sourlier Aug 09 '12 at 20:40
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I suggest you check out AndEngine, its an open-source 2d open-gl based game engine that has a strong community. If you want something that you can make cross platform games with check out LibGDX It too is free, open source and based on openGl but it also allows for 3d games. It is also cross platform so a game you write for android can be compiled for, Windows, MacOS (see below), Linux. It also has a really strong community.

Regarding iOS and OSX games you really can't make them unless you buy a Mac. Apple doesn't distribute their SDK for use on any other platform but their own. That said you could maybe get something working under VMWare

slayton
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  • But can I port code written in any of these to Iphone when I get a mac? – Ahmad Baracat Sep 16 '11 at 19:14
  • No both those engines are currently only for Android. For iOS/Android game engines look at this thread http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3996793/game-engine-for-iphone-android – slayton Sep 16 '11 at 19:20
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Check out MOAI SDK. It's completely free and open-source. It is in beta right now but it is still pretty good. Crimson Pirates for iOS was developed with it.

Right now it supports iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux. Really good. I thought I liked Cocos2D-x, which is a C++ variant of Cocos2d-iphone supporting windows, iOS (not Mac), and Android but not truely supporting desktop kinda made me like MOAI more.

You can use C++ with MOAI or you can use Lua (they highly encourage using Lua). Being built in C++ is really great because you get access to a vast amount of libraries and you can easily bind them to Lua.

Moai-Lover
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  • looks enticing if you are a Lua person but there's no debugger or simulator as of Jan 2012 http://getmoai.com/forums/moai-roadmap/moai-ide/ which is what put me off – Andy Dent Jan 12 '12 at 01:14
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Since it is not obvious from the other answers, it should be noted to those who are unaware that the ExEn project and the MonoGame projects both build on the Monotouch platform from Xamarin (formerly from Novell) - which is a prerequisite for both for iOS games.

The Xamarin projects was mentioned in another answer as an alternative to Xna, but is really not. Monotouch and Mono for Android are a way to run C# and .NET on iPhone/iPad and Android.

Game development at least on the iPhone side, is typically done using OpenGL and OpenGL is also wrapped in Monotouch. The Xna implementations in Exen and MonoGame also uses OpenGL as the foundation as far as I know.

It should also be noted that Monotouch and Mono for Android are commercial products.

BTW: Exen also compiles to other platforms e.g. silverlight.

Jesper Niedermann
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You should try games development with cocos2d. Cocos2d is one of the best 2d engines for ios/Android I have come across. http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/

It is openGL based free engine.

Regards, Sam

Saurabh Passolia
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  • Its worth pointing out that the android version of the engine isn't written by the same group that made the iphone version. The android group are trying to implement the same API's but the android version isn't an official port. – slayton Sep 16 '11 at 19:01
  • you can also use cocos2d-x (the c++ version) on Android. That's backed by China Unicom so likely to be a reliable choice and of course includes many other platforms - http://www.cocos2d-x.org/projects/cocos2d-x/wiki/Platforms_supported_by_cocos2d-x – Andy Dent Jan 30 '12 at 06:13
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These might be useful to you. However, the first two aren't free, but they have editions for both iOS and Android.

iOS: http://ios.xamarin.com/

Android: http://android.xamarin.com/

I've never used either of them, but it's something I've been looking into a bit. Apparently it lets you run C# and .NET code on both iOS and Android which is pretty cool considering how much easier drawing and things like that are in XNA compared to Open GL ES 2.0. Not to mention the fact that you'd be using C# instead of objective C.

There's also a free open source version sponsored by the same people who make the two I listed above. This one lets you run C# and .NET code on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

Andrew Black
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I have been researching this topic intensively over the last few weeks.

I think the best solution for you is Marmalade, formerly known as Airplay SDK. It is actually more Windows-oriented than Mac (work in Visual Studio), although you still need a Mac for the final step of getting a signed app onto the store. It sounds like a very capable pure C++ product with iOS and Android as well as a bunch of other platforms, Personal license with splash screen $150 pa, single seat Professional $500 pa for all platforms. They have a 45 day trial license which I'm currently using.

I was tempted by MonoGame, could live with the $400 price tag for each platform (for the needed MonoTouch) but it is just way too buggy. The final straw was a combination of a bug causing it to crash all the samples on iOS5 and that keyboard input is broken on iOS.

Too be fair, I'm pretty sure that is all on the MonoGame side and was very impressed with how well MonoTouch worked and was looking forward to programming in c# with LINQ et al.

Andy Dent
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