2d game with libgdx where to start?

[hellrazer21]

yea i was going through the code ... its kinda the only thing i been doing lately since i started messing with libgdx since i'm still trying to understand how people make everything work and i think i kinda get it except for when everything is split up like the code is put into different files how do you make it run the file you want

like in magnet.java
setScreen(getMenuScreen());

this part would mean its going to use the menuscreen.java file right?
how do you go from one to another to another

[ReBirth]

You can see that my MenuScreen, (and all of my screens instance since they're child class of AbstractScreen), holds reference to the main class (Magnet). This main class is the only one who can change screen. Inside MenuScreen, I just call game.setScreen(game.getXXXScreen()) to move on. With this structure, you will have solid structure that Game child class acts as the backbone, holding one screen reference who has different visual and logic.

[hellrazer21]

why not just put all that stuff from AbstractScreen into the main?

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[ReBirth]

Because that makes no sense to me. In my newer version I move every asset creation in AbstractScreen to new class, call it Factory. Basically main class should only do screen managements and holding reference to singleton-candidate classes like AssetManager, sound, music, etc.

[hellrazer21]

i guess that does make sense is that how everyone else does it?
im not that far yet in my game to actually do that(well im not really sure how or when to try that) im barely learning how to place the buttons on screen
i have the splash screen  fadeing in and out (with tween engine) and it should be triggering the menu screen next but i'm trying to figure out whether to use scene2d table layout and virtual viewport  and skins but i'm starting to feel overwhelmed i dont know how to use any of this stuff yet  im still digging through examples and wiki and what not

do you think i should use a class for this like you did with AbstractScreen or should i use it for the actual game when i load up controls sounds and stuff?

[ReBirth]

Mine is just example. Ofc all is up to you

[hellrazer21]

seems like everyone else is doing the abstractScreen thing i seen it on a few blogs now didn't know what it was before  

for the menus i been doing some research into it and i think it goes something like this
(correct me if im wrong)
scene2d uses table layout (to set up the table you can use the tablelayout editor) and skin is for the UI buttons and widgets but to use skin you need to have the following stuff from here https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/tree/master/tests/gdx-tests-android/assets/data
uiskin.json
uiskin.atlas
uiskin.png
could probably make the atlas with texture packer then change a few things in the uiskin.json file... thats if you need both or maybe you only need one of the two?  
that part kind confused me ... second paragraph under overview and the resource section from this link
 https://code.google.com/p/libgdx/wiki/Skin

there used to be a skin packer but it has disappeared off the face of the earth (deprecated maybe?)
https://code.google.com/p/libgdx-users/wiki/SkinPacker

anyway closest thing i could find to a tutorial was steigert's blog
http://steigert.blogspot.com/2012/03/4-libgdx-tutorial-tablelayout.html
an important part that he mentions is when useing the tablelayout editor to save the code in a txt file (i was looking for a save button   like a dumbass for a few minutes till i read his blog ... theres no save button in tablelayout-editor )
"Now we should save this layout descriptor inside our resources folder. I saved it under: tyrian-android/assets/layout-descriptors/menu-screen.txt "

theres a few examples at the bottom of this link
https://code.google.com/p/libgdx/wiki/scene2dui#Widgets

so all this boils down to scene2d   who would have guessed so many things go into makeing it work

so am i right or wrong?

[matheus23]

@hellrazer21: The problem with the TableLayout DSL (Domain Specific Language) is, that it has been deprecated

I hate Nate for doing that
Would have been so nice with the DSL... 

More info and general TableLayout tutorials here:
Documentation of the 'old' Version 1 TableLayout (with the DSL): https://code.google.com/p/table-layout/wiki/V1Documentation
Documentation of the new TableLayout: https://code.google.com/p/table-layout/

[hellrazer21]

so all this time i spent looking around   was a big waste of time
wheres the rage face when u need it   ...   lol


what about MTX it seems legit  
http://moribitotechx.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-is-mtx.html

MTX looks like it would do the trick since scene2d only does buttons MTX seems like it can handle the resizeing the screen and aspect ratios and stuff

[Nate]

I hate the libgdx-users project. It is not maintained and way out of date. It makes people think all the libgdx documentation is out of date. We don't control the libgdx-users and it is not official. It even says on its homepage that that libgdx-users is obsolete. I wish they would take it down.

You might try the official docs. This should be all you need:
https://code.google.com/p/libgdx/wiki/scene2d
https://code.google.com/p/libgdx/wiki/scene2dui
https://code.google.com/p/libgdx/wiki/Skin
http://code.google.com/p/table-layout/
http://code.google.com/p/libgdx/wiki/TexturePacker

Yeah, it's too bad about the DSL. In practice with apps of any complexity, you end up needing code in the middle of your layout stuff. Then your options are 1) generate some DSL from code (nasty!), 2) do some layout in the DSL and the rest in code, 3) rewrite your whole layout in code. I found myself doing 3 far too often. Method chaining makes the Java API not too bad. It still has the problem of hiding the hierarchy. What I do to mitigate that is to create all the widgets before hand, then create and populate any nested tables, then assemble it all in the layout. Separating the layout code from the creation code makes it easy to see the layout.

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[Cero]

It is not maintained and way out of date. I wish they would take it down.

This too:  libgdx.l33tlabs.org/docs/api/

[Nate]

Hmm, that is from the old build server, Mario still probably has access there.

[hellrazer21]

so the tablelayout-editor is the only thing i shouldn't use
everything else is ok ?

[matheus23]

Yeah, it's too bad about the DSL. In practice with apps of any complexity, you end up needing code in the middle of your layout stuff. Then your options are 1) generate some DSL from code (nasty!), 2) do some layout in the DSL and the rest in code, 3) rewrite your whole layout in code. I found myself doing 3 far too often. Method chaining makes the Java API not too bad. It still has the problem of hiding the hierarchy. What I do to mitigate that is to create all the widgets before hand, then create and populate any nested tables, then assemble it all in the layout. Separating the layout code from the creation code makes it easy to see the layout.

The Idea of the DSL for me was not to write the DSL inside my .java files, but actually have them lying outside in layout files. I'd call them .tbl or .lay then. Or simply .txt, but the point is:
My goal was to write a little nashorn javascript magic inside the DSL, pre-parse the DSL to separate the Javascript stuff from the DSL stuff and then make it be the 'Model' and 'Component' part of the MVC pattern, the 'View' part being in java code.

The goal was not to create 10 classes for all of my layouts.
The real goal was to have something, where I don't have to write any code anymore for writing a game. But that is only fiction

[hellrazer21]

MTX uses a ton of classes just for a fancy menu but you gotta admit its really nice

[matheus23]

MTX uses a ton of classes just for a fancy menu but you gotta admit its really nice

Whats MTX? Googleing doesn't help that much there...

<edit>
To add a little bit to what I said:
In my opinion, code should not represent Data, but data should represent Data, and code should be the abstract Structure of the Data.
In other words: Classes are Button types, the table layout, the Label, the ScrollPane, etc., but not my "MenuScreen" or "SplashScreen".
Since those classes would (almost) only contain data.
</edit>

[hellrazer21]

MTX is something for making menus, haven't looked into too much but it looks interesting
http://moribitotechx.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-is-mtx.html

someone told me about it in another forum when i was asking "how do you make your menus" i think the guy that told me about it, is the same guy that made MTX  

[Nate]

The Idea of the DSL for me was not to write the DSL inside my .java files, but actually have them lying outside in layout files. I'd call them .tbl or .lay then. Or simply .txt, but the point is:
My goal was to write a little nashorn javascript magic inside the DSL, pre-parse the DSL to separate the Javascript stuff from the DSL stuff and then make it be the 'Model' and 'Component' part of the MVC pattern, the 'View' part being in java code.

The DSL works fine to describe your layout, until you need some code to generate layout. JavaScript could help there, but I would rather all my code be in Java for debugging, type safety, refactoring, etc. Ultimately it is better to do layout in Java, just need a nice API and to separate widget creation from layout.

MTX is built on top of scene2d, AFAIK. I haven't look at it much so can't comment.

[matheus23]

The Idea of the DSL for me was not to write the DSL inside my .java files, but actually have them lying outside in layout files. I'd call them .tbl or .lay then. Or simply .txt, but the point is:
My goal was to write a little nashorn javascript magic inside the DSL, pre-parse the DSL to separate the Javascript stuff from the DSL stuff and then make it be the 'Model' and 'Component' part of the MVC pattern, the 'View' part being in java code.

The DSL works fine to describe your layout, until you need some code to generate layout. JavaScript could help there, but I would rather all my code be in Java for debugging, type safety, refactoring, etc. Ultimately it is better to do layout in Java, just need a nice API and to separate widget creation from layout.

MTX is built on top of scene2d, AFAIK. I haven't look at it much so can't comment.

Nice to live in the same Time Zone now

Javascript was more or less only an example. Also it's always a personal preference. Why deprecate the DSL, if you could make your library a little bit more awesome? Yes. I read the Article about the deprecation. But maybe the DSL just needed to be tweaked a little? maybe...
The Idea I had was to actually use Scala for scripting. It's incredibly easy and I know how it works. And It's typed. Also, Javascript might be un-typed, but (I quote) "then it's less 'typing'" It's a scripting language, so it should be suited for such kind of thing.

[Nate]

Aye, I'm in Croatia.

I'm not too interested in Scala, but dragging around the runtime would be inconvenient. The DSL was cool but increased the complexity of the lib. The biggest reason to dump it is that its goal was to make complex layouts easier and to expose their hierarchy. What actually happened was the DSL could only be used for simple layouts. Anything complex had to be written in code anyway. This means it was the wrong tool for the job. I don't see how it could have been saved. Turns out the Java API is quite easy to use.

[hellrazer21]

i really hate myself for asking this but can someone show me what a simple table layout looks like all coded out or can someone tell me what are the important bits of code i need to get one together and on screen

i know theres this example but when i try running it i just get errors
https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/blob/master/tests/gdx-tests/src/com/badlogic/gdx/tests/TableLayoutTest.java#L46

i'm just trying to set up a simple main menu with a few buttons

[heisenbergman]

I'm keeping tabs on this thread since I'll be jumping into libgdx as well Looking forward to the exchange of information. Reading the whole thread as been enlightening so far.

[ReBirth]

FYI mostly Test classes on libgdx official repo is kinda outdated. For example test classes that use ShapeRenderer, there're some unknown enum members. Refer to Nate's link, it has very complete guides.

http://code.google.com/p/table-layout/

And it'll be better to post the error.

[isteinvids]

Start by creating a class ;DDD

[heisenbergman]

There's around 5 hours of video tutorials here spread out over 10 videos guiding the viewer through a single project:

http://www.youtube.com/user/doctoriley/videos

Seems awesome.

[hellrazer21]

heres the code its basicly the same thing as my last link
http://pastebin.java-gaming.org/ed22e146058

and heres the error
http://pastebin.java-gaming.org/d22e4206853

[matheus23]

and heres the error
http://pastebin.java-gaming.org/d22e4206853

What error? These are simple warnings (even less than warnings).

[Jimmt]

You might want to learn simple java first if you think those are errors...

[ReBirth]

Nothing wrong on code, although you forget the @Override on listeners' methods.

[hellrazer21]

lol my bad its cause every time i see something under the problems tab i always just think to my self its an error

i'll be more specific next time  

so what am i missing cause when i do the quick fix it just tell me to get rid of those lines an with or without them i still dont get anything on screen

im just running that class by itself

heres what shows up on the console tab
http://pastebin.java-gaming.org/22e40386354

Nothing wrong on code, although you forget the @Override on listeners' methods.

where exactly do i put it ?