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Are there any good technical comparisons available between the various game development options available. I know this is an often asked questions but most of the stuff I found on SO was somewhat dated or covered separate platforms.

I started by looking into 2D (more like 2.5D) game development for Android but I found a number of cross platform development engines/platforms so I thought, why not ? but I'm a bit confused now.

I was wondering if someone could give me a good comparison of the options and the pros and con of each. So far I had narrowed it down based on my language of preference (Java) and the platforms I would like to target. Like I said, I specifically started with Android but would like to target web as well. iOS would be nice but I don't want to overpay for just about everything. Desktop would be great and finally, Flash is fine as long as it comes with the other stuff.

The ones I have looked at so far are : PlayN, Unity and libgdx

What are the differences in performance and usability between these ?

P.S: Since I am a newbie in any case, I wouldn't mind learning another language so if there are other packages that work with say Javascript and HTML5, I would mind those either but from what I've heard they generally don't compile to native code like PlayN does.

ssube
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Saad Farooq
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2 Answers2

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PlayN + libgdx both take their input as Java. You program using their abstraction layers, then it recompiles the java into whichever language is needed (native or javascript generally).

Unity is a whole other thing - It is a visually rich IDE and includes many languages you can work from. It is definitely geared towards 3D though. It is possible to do 2 and 2.5 D, but generally overkill.

Don't let 'native code compile' get you too worried. Generally there is still a language runtime (Unity uses Mono, a .NET clone) used to translate the logic on whatever platform its on. Generally the code you write doesnt cause much overhead, its mostly the rendered and other stuff.

Colin Godsey
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  • Unity is not an IDE, it's a game engine. EDIT: I just realized how old the question and the answers are! – EvilTak Sep 18 '16 at 11:04
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I used libGDX and AndEngine and seems that libGDX is faster. One big plus for libGDX is that you can develop applications and run in windows without emulator and of cource is more likely dedicated to 2D

Duna
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