My first mobile app in 2016

Hi all

This year i want do my first app on android, one of my year's objectives.
This is the year :-)
An app on android, uhmmm ...., ok but the first question is "What kind of app ?", a game, an educational app, an app for useful use, ....
Uhmmm ... ok a game, i have many ideas about it.
Second answer "A 3D game or a 2D game?", ok a 2D game more simple.
Third ansert "What library i must use to do it?".

Below there are some of the most used 2D library :

Commercial C++ frameworks:

• Unity3D: very good (available on Android, iOS, Web, Windows, OS X) [Game: Rocket Bunnies]
• Unreal Engine (commercial): the best engine but not for beginners [Game: Dungeon Defenders]

Open Source C++ frameworks:

• Ogre3D: the best open source 3d engine but it is a large framework
• Irrlicht: good performance, light framework [Game: Moblox]
• Linderdaum Engine: open source for Windows and Android
• Cocos2d-x: open source cross platform

Java Open Source Frameworks:

• LibGDX : Open Source, Very Popular, Supports multiple platforms, Support for Tiled, Box2D and other, Good Documentation
• AndEngine (Open Source): good performance. For documentation, look examples and read source code; but it is the Free library to begin a game project [Game: Drop Block]
• cocos2d for Android: Garbage Collector problem
• SDL is not a good idea because it is designed for framebuffer access.
• rokon: good performance and designed for mobile but project seems dead.

Physics Engine:

• box2d (OpenSource): fast and easy
• jbox2d (OpenSource): so slow on Java that I made a JNI wrapper with SWIG to use native box2d (AndEngine does the same)
• chipmunk (OpenSource): fast but I prefer box2d
• bullet (OpenSource): excellent 3D engine

After a "deep" analysis my choice was "libGDX". "Why this library ?", for these three reasons :

1. Because it is in JAVA (I know this language)
2. Because it is multiplatform 
3. Because it has a good documentation 

Actually i am doing a course on "UDACITY" learning site, named "2D Game Development with LibGDX". I hope that it helps me :-).

Stay tuned.

cron4j - Java cron scheduler like unix/linux cron utility

Hi all

Today i want to speak about an open source java library called "cron4j".
It's an Italian open source project, that allows scheduled tasks using a cron-like syntax in java.

There is a good manual here that explains how to implement it with examples.

Here is a little explanation of unix/linux cron utility.

Stay tuned

JGraph : beautiful choice

For a java swing management tool for my current Interconnection project I needed a java library to show a graphical representation of an internal algorithm.
So I started looking for java libraries for the simple graphical representation and found these libraries:

• Piccolo2D : http://www.piccolo2d.org/index.html
• JGraph : http://www.jgraph.com/

Really I needed a simple library to draw: links, rectangles and rhombus, common flow-chart symbols.

Best of these for my needs is JGraph , very complete and simple with a complete documentation. Respects a Piccolo2D is very complete in the linking management and layout design.

Very big problems for me were redistributing shapes and redesign all the forms and links, avoiding intersections.

In JGraph you can adopt, once created all shapes and links, a layout that redesign all shapes apply a particular representation (Tree, circular, organic, …) or you can implement generic Interface mxGraphLayout to create your own layout.

I used JGraph 6 for swing application and really recommend it.

To the next Post.