$12256 / $11500
So im sitting here downloading yet another IDE, SDK, NDK, blah blah blah.
Isnt there an easier way to do this? I tried to download andriod's new "IDE" but realized the documentation for their ndk is "eclipse" not intelij, as my eyes glaze over the pages and pages of documentation, i wondering if im wasting my time trying to figure out things at such a low level. (note i read a bunch of andriod ide documentation months ago and its now obsolete)
Im looking for more of an engine where i can just start cranking out assets and code, and not have to worry about the nitty gritty of an andriod app. Any ides for a free engine? Call my lazy, but im a programmer. I want to write printf hello world, press a button (or type a command) and get an apk file. :)
any thoughts would be welcome :)
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I'd be very interested to hear of an easier solution. Far as I can tell, every single development environment for Android sits on top of the complete SDK, which in turns requires the Java SDK. So you have a ton of heavyweight stuff to install and learn how to use in order to make even the simplest Android app.
But maybe I missed something. Hello? Anyone? Help?
Love-android-sdl2 is a pretty easy solution. Install the base .apk, drop your love2d project in /sdcard/lovegame/, and fire it up, and it loads and runs your project. You can develop easily in love2d this way, and not have to worry about firing up the android dev environment until you're ready to release it as a full standalone app.
My project: Bits & Bots
The easiest: Unity & Corona. Both have free edition, with some limitations for sure.
Completely free, but need some configuration (not overly complicated): Starling & OpenFL
Godot can export to Android. You need the SDK to build for android, but you don't need it just to start developing (test with native on dev machine).
Red warrior needs caffeine badly.
GameMaker
The free version is great for starting out and although the port costs 300 dollars you can port it externally for free
Now the Pro version allows a lot more things, not quite sure which, right now it is 200 bucks but sometimes they lower it down alot, i picked it at 30... Id say crack it first and then buy it at discount.
I made a game engine that might suit your needs - it is intended for small sprite-based games. There is nothing to download, but there is a new language to learn. I think it is simple enough to learn from example. There are lots of demos on the website and since this is relatively new, I'd be happy to work with you to get you started. The site is http://structuredcanvaslanguage.com/
You code directly onto a textarea of the web page and push run. On the site in the "try it" area you can try out pacman, space invaders, and others and tinker with the code right inside the page.
Eclipse works as you describe, I just click a button (well OK, a few buttons, but it's straightforward) and it generates the apk. I imagine the newer android studio is similar.
If you want a game engine, Unity seems to be well used, is free (as in cost), and exports to android.
I don't think there's a way round installing something heavyweight, it's like asking to do windows development without installing the SDK. You can use something else instead, but game engines are still going to be fairly big. (Yes you can make a command line hello world a lot easier, but that's not useful on a platform like android.)
Personally, I am focussing on Javascript with html5 features. Once such a game works, you can just put it online, or use an . apk that simply opens the html page found in a certain folder with an embeded browser or the users browser. Even though this won't allow certain operations that are possible with native code (like writing a file) pretty much everything is covered, for instance localStorage can easily sustitute am entire little harddrive, dedicated to your game only.When writing in html5/js/css3 you have the choice of writing by your own or use one of the many existing game engines, such as phaser, löve(edit: my mistake, löve uses Lua, not Js) etc.
I'd also like to mention Mark Sibly's "X-Monkey" (and wip version 2), that allows to compile for various platforms, in the free version to html5 and x86 exe: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_X
Completely agree with MoikMella. Love2d is easy as heck. I could program a basic platformer and deploy it to android as an apk in a few hours. Lua is also a very beginner friendly and clean language. Also we have a very helpful community. Our guys are just starving for new problems to solve hahaha.
https://love2d.org
Ask around on the forum if you need any help, and I recommend looking up "start gamedev love2d" for an unbelievably easy deploy to apk.
I only remember Lua from Modding the Far Cry game, so that the Chopper wouldn't stop me from chilling at the beach anymore. Never read any Lua tutorial, just went in and chanched a couple of things - Lua is indeed easy if you know C or Javascript.
It may be easy to copy your love game file to that folder on your android device, but that doesn't give you a distributable, installable apk file. Even tho, I think I remember there is a tool that is able to turn an installed app into an installable apk, and I think the tool runs on android directly, although can't remember the name and it's uncertain whether it supports the inclusion of data added after the installation.
Love itself may be good and powerful, but just from watching the wiki page about "distribution": https://love2d.org/wiki/Game_Distribution I actually find it rather complicated. I have to add a certain list of dlls to the exe by using a dos prompt? Doesn't sound like "Press F5" to me. In comparation, the mentioned "Monkey-X" really requires 1 click to generate and run an exe, or a js in the browser. It even comes with a minimalistic webserver, that automaticly hosts the html5 (where in phaser you have to do this by your own), just in fact by hitting "F5".
Got to tell you, I think the academification of programming, eg. by the academic doctrine of "structured programming" (mainly in order to allow a company to easily fire + replace programmers by program-maintainers, once the work is done) wasn't so good for the progeammers. Today I see professional coders often do stupidly simple tasks with stupidly overcomplicated code, language, ide, library etc such as the download and installation of a several gigabye "Suite" in order to program something along the line of "Print "hello world.""
I wouldn't care about their inefficiency if they hadn't made this clumsyness a required core skill in IT jobs. Therefor, not specificly adressing love, I would say I'd be rather oldschool. You guys love pixels, like in 16x16 tiles. That is oldschool too. Why then unnecessarily use bloatware for the code side.
want to go easy mode? code in Flash (as3). with a touch of a button you can make .apk files. You also have the option to export to IOS if you fancy. AS3 very easy language and Flash have nice user friendly UI to start develop games. Especially good for 2D projects i would say.