Android NDK Game Development Cookbook

Table of Contents

Android NDK Game Development Cookbook

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who is this book for

Building the source code

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code for this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Establishing a Build Environment

Introduction

Installing Android development tools on Windows

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

Installing Android development tools on Linux

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

Creating an application template manually

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also…

Adding native C++ code to your application

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Switching NDK toolchains

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

Supporting multiple CPU architectures

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

Basic rendering with OpenGL ES

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Going cross platform

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Unifying the cross-platform code

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

Linking and source code organization

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Signing release Android applications

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

2. Porting Common Libraries

Introduction

Compiling the native static libraries for Windows

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There’s more...

Compiling the native static libraries for Android

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Compiling the libcurl networking library

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works…

There’s more…

See also

Compiling the OpenAL library

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works…

See also

Compiling libvorbis, libmodplug, and libtheora

Getting ready

How to do it...

Using the FreeImage graphics library

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There’s more…

See also

Using the FreeType library for text rendering

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works…

There’s more...

Implementing timing in physics

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also…

Rendering graphics in 2D

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

See also …

Setting up Box2D simulations

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There’s more...

See also

Building the ODE physical library

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There’s more...

See also

3. Networking

Introduction

Fetching list of photos from Flickr and Picasa

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Downloading images from Flickr and Picasa

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Performing cross-platform multithreading

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Synchronizing native cross-platform threads

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Managing memory using reference counting

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Implementing asynchronous task queues

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Handling asynchronous callbacks invocation

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

Working with the network asynchronously

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

See also

Detecting a network address

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Writing the HTTP server

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

4. Organizing a Virtual Filesystem

Introduction

Abstracting file streams

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Implementing portable memory-mapped files

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Implementing file writers

How to do it...

How it works…

See also

Working with in-memory files

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Implementing mount points

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Enumerating files in the .zip archives

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Decompressing files from the .zip archives

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Loading resources asynchronously

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more

See also

Storing application data

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

5. Cross-platform Audio Streaming

Introduction

Initializing OpenAL and playing the .wav files

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works...

See also

Abstracting basic audio components

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Streaming sounds

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Decoding Ogg Vorbis files

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works…

Decoding tracker music using ModPlug

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

6. Unifying OpenGL ES 3 and OpenGL 3

Introduction

Unifying the OpenGL 3 core profile and OpenGL ES 2

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Initializing the OpenGL 3 core profile on Windows

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Initializing OpenGL ES 2 on Android

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Unifying the GLSL 3 and GLSL ES 2 shaders

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Manipulating geometry

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Unifying vertex arrays

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Creating a wrapper for textures

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Creating a canvas for immediate rendering

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

7. Cross-platform UI and Input Systems

Introduction

Processing multi-touch events on Android

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Setting up multi-touch emulation on Windows

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Handling multi-touch events on Windows

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Recognizing gestures

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Implementing an on-screen joypad

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Using FreeType for text rendering

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more…

Localization of in-game strings

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

8. Writing a Match-3 Game

Introduction

Handling asynchronous multi-touch input

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Improving the audio playback mechanism

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Shutting down the application

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Implementing the main loop

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Creating a multiplatform gaming engine

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

See also

Writing the match-3 game

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Managing shapes

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

See also

Managing the game field logic

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Implementing user interaction within a game loop

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also…

9. Writing a Picture Puzzle Game

Introduction

Implementing picture puzzle game logic

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Implementing the animated 3D image selector

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Page-based user interface

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works…

There's more...

See also

Image gallery with Picasa downloader

How to do it…

How it works…

See also

Implementing the complete picture-puzzle game

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more...

See also

Index

Android NDK Game Development Cookbook

Android NDK Game Development Cookbook

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: November 2013

Production Reference: 1191113

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78216-778-5

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Cover Image by Aniket Sawant (<aniket_sawant_photography@hotmail.com>)

Credits

Authors

Sergey Kosarevsky

Viktor Latypov

Reviewers

Mootez Billeh Chaabani

Guy Cole

Maya Posch

Acquisition Editor

Rebecca Youe

Lead Technical Editor

Azharuddin Sheikh

Technical Editors

Adrian Raposo

Gaurav Thingalaya

Project Coordinator

Apeksha Chitnis

Proofreaders

Simran Bhogal

Ameesha Green

Paul Hindle

Indexer

Priya Subramani

Graphics

Abhinash Sahu

Sheetal Aute

Production Coordinator

Conidon Miranda

Cover Work

Conidon Miranda

About the Authors

Sergey Kosarevsky is a software engineer with experience in C++ and 3D graphics. He has worked for mobile industry companies and was involved in mobile projects at SPB Software and Yandex. He has more than 10 years of software development experience, and more than four years of Android NDK experience. Sergey got his PhD in the field of Mechanical Engineering from the St. Petersburg Institute of Machine Building in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In his spare time Sergey maintains and develops an open source multiplatform 3D gaming engine, Linderdaum Engine (http://www.linderdaum.com). He is online at http://blog.linderdaum.com and can be contacted by email at .

I would like to thank Alexander Pavlov, a Google engineer, for the time and effort he put into carefully reviewing our initial drafts and helping us to improve this book. Also I would like to thank Igor Demura (Google) for valuable criticism on our chapter 6, as well as Dmitry Ovcharov (Yandex), and other friends and colleagues who helped this book happen.

Viktor Latypov is a software engineer and a mathematician with experience in compiler development, device drivers, robotics, high-performance computing, and a personal interest in 3D graphics and mobile technology. Surrounded by computers for almost 20 years, he enjoys every bit of developing and designing software for anything with a CPU inside. Viktor holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Saint Petersburg State University.

I would like to thank my mother, Galina Fedyushina, for all of the support and the innate thirst for knowledge.

About the Reviewers

Mootez Chaabani works as a software engineer R&D at a French company. He has recently graduated from studies in Graphical Programming, and Virtual and Augmented Reality. He has published two apps: Quiz game in the Windows Market Place, and an Android app in the local app shop. He is currently working on Android/C++ projects based on 3D in SpacEyes.

He is currently working with SpacEyes as a Software Engineer R&D. He has also worked as an Android developer at Orange, Tunisia in 2012. In 2011, he was an intern at Microsoft, Tunisia.

He has also reviewed Unity Android Game Development, Beginner’s Guide, Packt Publishing, by Thomas James Moffitt-Finnegan.

I would like to thank my family, my soul mate, and all my of friends including the Bardo Boys (my neighborhood friends).

Guy Cole is a freelance silicon valley contractor working on mobile devices (Android and iOS), Java/J2EE, relational databases, TCP/IP networks, and UNIX/LINUX hosted enterprise solutions. Guy has designed and fielded applications for B2B, banking, health care, e-commerce, shipping, mass transit, national defense, enterprise/network management, and cable/broadcast industries. His customers include Northrop Grumman, Wells Fargo, Barclay Global Investments, Hewlett Packard, DHL Worldwide Express, Motorola, Cisco Systems, Cray Research, Tandem Computers, NCR, and many smaller (but equally interesting) companies.

Maya Posch has been involved with programming and technology in general from a young age. She has endeavored to expand her programming skills mostly on low-level, embedded, and game-related programming. She currently runs her own company—Nyanko—which is involved in these aforementioned fields, in addition to doing general development work for other companies.

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Preface

Mobility and the demand for high-performance computations are often very tightly coupled. Current mobile applications do many computationally-intense operations such as 3D and stereoscopic rendering, images and audio recognition, and video decoding and encoding, especially the birth of new technologies such as the augmented reality. This include mobile games, 3D user interface software, and social software, which involves media stream processing.

In some sense, mobile game development forces us to travel back in time several years due to the limited hardware capabilities, low memory bandwidth, and precious battery resources, but also makes us reconsider the basic forms of interaction with the user.

A smooth and responsive user interface based on gesture input, Internet access, ambient sound effects, high-quality text, and graphics are the ingredients of a successful mobile application.

All major mobile operating systems give software developers different possibilities to develop close-to-the-hardware. Google provides an Android Native Development Kit (NDK) to ease the porting of existing applications and libraries from other platforms to Android, and exploit the performance of the underlying hardware offered by the modern mobile devices. C, and especially C++, both have a reputation of being a hard language to learn, and a hard language to write user interface code in. This is indeed true, but only when someone attempts to write everything from scratch. In this book we use C and C++ programming languages, and link them to well-established third-party libraries to allow the creation of content-rich applications with a modern touch-based interface and access to the Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs of popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Instagram, and a myriad of others.

Despite the availability of the information on how to use Internet resources in the applications written in Java or .NET languages, not much has been said about doing this in C++ programming language. Modern OpenGL versions require a sufficient amount of effort to create and use the latest extensions. The programming using the OpenGL API is usually described in literature in a platform-specific way. Things get even more complicated with the mobile version, the OpenGL ES, as developers have to adapt existing shader programs to allow them to run on the mobile graphics processing units (GPUs). Sound playback using standard Android facilities in C++ is also not straightforward, for example, things should be done to re-use the existing PC code for the OpenAL library. This book tries to shed some light on these topics and combine a number of useful recipes to simplify the multiplatform-friendly development with Android NDK.

Android is a mobile operating system based on the Linux kernel and designed for smartphones, tablet computers, netbooks, and other portable devices. Initial development of Android was started by Android Inc, which was bought by Google in 2005. In November 2007, the first version was unveiled, however, the first commercially available Android-based smartphone, HTC Dream, was released almost one year later in 2008.

Android versions, besides a numerical denomination, have official code names—each major release is named after a sweet dessert. The following are some significant milestones in Android platform technologies and features related to NDK:

Version 1.5 (Cupcake): This Android version featured the first release of Android Native Development Kit supporting ARMv5TE instructions.

Version 1.6 (Donut): First introduction of OpenGL ES 1.1 native library support.

Version 2.0 (Eclair): OpenGL ES 2.0 native library support.

Version 2.3 (Gingerbread):

Concurrent garbage collector in Dalvik VM. This has faster gaming performance and improved efficiency of OpenGL ES operations.

Capabilities of Native Development Kit are greatly extended, including sensors access, native audio OpenSL ES, the EGL library, activity life cycle management, and native access to assets.

Version 3.0 (Honeycomb):

Support for tablet computers with large touch screens

Support of multicore processors

Version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich):

Unified UI for smartphones and tablet

Hardware-accelerated 2D rendering. VPN client API

Versions 4.1 and 4.2 (Jelly Bean):

This has improved rendering performance and triple buffering

External display support, including external displays over Wi-Fi

They have high-dynamic range camera support

New built-in developer options for debugging and profiling. Dalvik VM runtime optimizations

Version 4.3 (Jelly Bean): OpenGL ES 3.0 native library support.

Version 4.4 (KitKat): Introduced access to RenderScript from NDK. This feature is backwards compatible with any device running Android 2.2 or higher.

Android Native Development Kit (NDK) is used for multimedia applications that require performance that Dalvik is unable to provide, and direct access to the native system libraries. NDK is also the key for portability, which in turn allows a reasonably comfortable development and debugging process using familiar tools such as GCC and Clang toolchains or alike. The typical usage of NDK determines the scope of this book—integration of some of the most commonly used C/C++ libraries for graphics, sound, networking, and resource storage.

Initially, NDK was based on the Bionic library. It is a derivation of the BSD standard C library (libc) developed by Google for Android. The main goals of Bionic were as follows:

License: Original GNU C Library (glibc) is GPL-licensed and Bionic has a BSD license.

Size: Bionic is much smaller in size compared to GNU C Library.

Speed: Bionic is designed for mobile CPUs with relatively low clock frequencies. For example, it has a custom implementation of pthreads.

Bionic lacks many important features found in full libc implementations, such as RTTI and C++ exceptions handling support. However, NDK provides several libraries with different C++ helper runtimes which implement these features. These are GAbi++ runtime, STLport runtime, and GNU Standard C++ Library. Besides the basic POSIX features, Bionic has support for Android-specific mechanisms such as logging.

The NDK is a very effective way to reuse a great body of existing C and C++ code.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Establishing a Build Environment, explains how to install and configure Android SDK and NDK on Microsoft Windows and Ubuntu/Debian Linux flavors, and how to build and run your first application on an Android-based device. You will learn how to use different compilers and toolchains that come with the Android NDK. Debugging and deploying the application using the adb tool is also covered.

Chapter 2, Porting Common Libraries, contains a set of recipes to port well-established C++ projects and APIs to Android NDK, such as FreeType fonts rendering library, FreeImage images loading library, libcurl and OpenSSL (including compilation of libssl and libcrypto), OpenAL API, libmodplug audio library, Box2D physics library, Open Dynamics Engine (ODE), libogg, and libvorbis. Some of them require changes to the source code, which will be explained. Most of these libraries are used later in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 3, Networking, shows you how to use the well-known libcurl library to download files using the HTTP protocol and how to form requests and parse responses from popular Picasa and Flickr online services directly using C++ code. Most applications nowadays use network data transfer in one way or another. HTTP protocol is the foundation of the APIs for all of the popular websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, SoundCloud, and YouTube. The remaining part of the chapter is dedicated to the web server development. Having a mini web server in the application allows a developer to control the software remotely and monitor its runtime without using the OS-specific code. The beginning of the chapter also introduces a task queue for background download processing and simple smartpointers to allow efficient cross-thread data interchange. These threading primitives