I have documented a basic introduction to creating 2D games using openGL ES on Android.

I wanted to share how I drew 2D sprites on to the screen; after researching different methods and techniques and finding a wealth of information on other’s blogs and Developer Journal’s, hopefully this may may help someone  when they decide to make the plunge to create a 2D OpenGL ES game for android.

I will try to update the Development Quest and document any findings I make and hopefully before too long should have a fully fledged game available on the market place before too long.

Table of Contents

• (Pt.1) – Introduction
• (Pt.2) – OpenGL Project Setup
• (Pt.3) – OpenGL Drawing Sprites
• (Pt.4) – Animating the Sprites

Further Reading

The following sites have helped me tremendously when I was researching this topic, and without others sharing their experience I doubt I would have ever learnt anything, so here is a list of sites that I went back to time and time again:

• Insanity Design – NeHe Android Ports
  • Has ported the NeHe Tutorials into Android Java code
• Robert Green’s Blog – Light Racer 3D Development Journal
  • And excellent site which logs the development of the Lightracer 3D game
• Against the Grain – Introduction to 3D Programming with Android
  • Has lots of information about canvas but also begins to introduce openGL in later tutorials
• Stack Overflow – Transparent texture in OpenGL ES
  • A question I came across when seemingly no where else had the answer, stack overflow community to the rescue!
• Jayway Team Blog – OpenGL ES Tutorial for Android Series
  • A very interesting series on OpenGL for Android
• Basic4GL wikispace - 2D Drawing in OpenGL
  • Not Android, but you will soon learn that the fundamentals regarding OpenGL are almost the same whether you are programming in C, iOS, or Java, etc.