Introducing the Android Game Development Kit

Posted by Scott Carbon-Ogden, Product Supervisor Android Video games

As we speak we’re launching the Android Sport Growth Equipment (AGDK), a full vary of instruments and libraries that will help you develop, optimize, and ship prime quality Android video games.

AGDK options comply with three key tenets:

• Code constructed for recreation growth. All of our libraries have been constructed and examined with efficiency in thoughts utilizing C or C++ APIs.
• Cut back fragmentation. The AGDK instruments and libraries work throughout many various Android variations. Most of those options will work on nearly any gadget in use as we speak.
• Constructed by Android, for Android. Options will probably be enhanced by future Android platform updates, and the libraries will present backwards compatibility when attainable.

On this preliminary launch, we’re specializing in overlaying three main areas the place we heard a variety of suggestions from our developer group: Built-in workflows, C/C++ recreation libraries, and efficiency optimization.

Built-in workflows

Usually, the much less you should change instruments, the extra environment friendly you could be, so with AGDK, we’re offering new instruments to facilitate Android recreation growth in your main IDE. We are going to concentrate on the bits of workflow the place Google can add distinctive worth and clear up Android particular issues, whereas being suitable with whichever components of your present workflow you’re comfy with.

• The Android Sport Growth Extension provides Android as a platform goal to Visible Studio. This permits present multi-platform Visible Studio recreation tasks to rapidly combine Android as a brand new platform. Study extra in the AGDE session.
• We’re working with among the hottest recreation engine builders to combine our instruments and libraries straight, so you may profit from enhanced efficiency and stability without having to make any modifications.
• The place that’s not attainable, we’ve targeted on constructing plugins for recreation engines comparable to Unity. These plugins can be found in a single place that will help you rapidly get what you want.

C/C++ recreation libraries

Begin your C growth with much less Java Native Interface (JNI) by utilizing our recreation libraries for C/C++ growth. Most video games and recreation engines are written in C++, whereas Android growth usually requires utilizing the Java programming language. Bridging these two languages utilizing a Java Native Interface requires effort and might introduce bugs or efficiency regressions. AGDK will assist you construct and customise recreation engines by offering C recreation libraries that reduce the usage of the Java Programming language and JNI. This makes your video games simpler to construct, debug, and preserve.

We’re specializing in what you’ve instructed us are your high frustrations. Initially, this can contain constructing foundational courses for exercise and enter. Long run, we plan to make extra C libraries to offer performance that’s generally used throughout recreation engines. We’re incorporating our present body pacing and high-performance audio libraries into this effort, and including three new ones:

• Sport Exercise gives a basis for C++ video games to be constructed on. It gives C interfaces for all of the Android occasions that you simply’d anticipate, from display screen rotation to app lifecycle. This fashion you may reduce the quantity of growth time you spend within the Java language. Not like Native Exercise, Sport Exercise is suitable with fragments and extendable, making it simpler to combine a few of your favorite SDKs.
• Sport Textual content enter gives a steady method to make use of the software program keyboard in C, that’s formally supported and can work throughout Android variations.
• Sport Controller is a approach to deal with enter from recreation controllers in C, to map their features and to reconnect to the gadget when needed.

Study extra about these libraries in our C/C++ libraries session.

To make integration as straightforward as attainable, you may get all our libraries as a Maven dependency, as a pre-compiled Zip file, or as source code.

Efficiency optimization

Our purpose is that will help you discover any stability or efficiency points earlier than launch and monitor your recreation post-launch to catch any points. We’re beginning with a very powerful metrics like body price, loading time, and reminiscence, and will probably be together with new metrics over time.

• We’re launching a significant replace to the Android GPU Inspector (AGI), that features body profiling performance. This works alongside the prevailing GPU profiling components that will help you absolutely perceive any GPU associated points. AGI is presently in open beta, and you may study extra in our GPU inspector session.
• We even have a suite of profilers in Android Studio and AGDE for the system, energy, CPU, and our new native reminiscence profiler that recreation devs can use to search out inefficiencies.
• Android Efficiency Tuner gives person telemetry. You should utilize it to see how totally different components of your recreation carry out and the way your recreation performs throughout totally different units. It’s possible you’ll already be utilizing this device for body price, and now we’re launching a brand new loading time operate. Study extra in our Android Efficiency Tuner session.

Go to g.co/android/AGDK for our newest assets for Android recreation growth and to obtain the AGDK. Take a look at the cellular session monitor for the complete lineup of classes from the Google for Video games Developer Summit.