So it’s taken a while, 4 years to be precise, but LibGDX, the cross platform Java game development engine, has finally hit the milestone release 1.0.
Everyone thought the day would never come. But here it is. libGDX 1.0 is officially released! Let me quickly run you through the most important changes:
- We have a new Gradle-based project setup! Say it after me: no more binary downloads! No more jars in your repo! Simple packaging for all platforms! Simple updates of libgdx and other library versions!
- All new docs in form of videos and Wiki articles. Each video has a reference to more videos at the end, make sure to watch them all!
- We removed OpenGL ES 1.x support and added OpenGL ES 3.0 support
- We removed a lot of clutter from the Android backend, and upped the minimally required version to Android 2.2
- Box2D has been moved to an extension
- A metric ton of improvements for Scene2D, like the viewport enhancement
- Out-of-the-box support for Intel® x86 Android devices. As an Intel® Software Partner, the core team worked to get libGDX optimized on Intel’s latest platform while having access to Intel’s technical and marketing support centers.
Read the full CHANGES file for more goodies.
To try out our new setup, start here!
If you have a Gradle-based project, make sure to update the gdxVersion to “1.0.0″ and refresh your IDE project files! The new snapshot (==nightly) version is “1.0.1-SNAPSHOT”
Besides the usual bug fixing and enhancements, we also cleaned up our libGDX repo, website and wiki for the 1.0 release. The old setup UI has been deprecated, the audio and image extensions have been removed, and the demos have been gradelized and put into their own repositories. You can now also directly test the demos in your browser (or desktop, or Android device)!
Finally, we’ve setup a Patreon, that allows users to contribute to our infrastructure costs. This has been so successful, that we were able to move our build and website server to Hetzner. After the move and adding some build magic, the build now takes 10 minutes instead of 1 hour and 45 minutes. Thanks to all the patrons, you really made a difference in my life!
Going forward, we’ll try to have a much shorter release cycle (2 weeks – 1 month). The major version of libGDX will stay at 1 for the foreseeable future. The minor version will be increased when API breaking changes are introduced. The patch version will be increased in case of bug fixes and API additions. Releasing often allows you to stay as up-to-date as possible before freezing your libGDX version for a release.
They also have a brief blurb about the future:
With all pieces in place, Q1 2014 was used to polish up libGDX’s user experience and documentation for the 1.0 release. We now support all JVM development environments (Eclipse, IDEA, Netbeans, CLI) through our Gradle-based builds. Our build server has been upgraded so we can push out new releases much more easily (and hence regularly!). Our repository has been cleaned up, any clutter has been removed. The Wiki has been updated to reflect the latest state of APIs and setup procedures. We are ready to pull the trigger. After 4 years of development, libGDX has finally reached version 1.0.
There is also a detailed history of the LibGDX project. You can read all about it in the announcement.
Congratulations to the LibGDX team!
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